| The FIFA World Ranking determines the relative strength of all the men's national teams based on performance over the previous eight years.
The rankings have plenty of detractors, including those who point out FIFA has consistently choosen to ignore them when it comes time to selecting the eight "top-seeded" teams for the World Cup.
How does FIFA determine a team's ranking? Only the seven best results per year are given full weighting. Results from the past are given progressively less weighting year by year until after eight years they are dropped completely to ensure current form is rated more highly than past results.
Teams are assigned points for every match played. The factors taken into consideration are:
Winning, drawing and losing. The strength of the opposition and whether the match went to penalties is taken into account.
Number of goals scored and conceded.
Home or away match.
Importance of the match. Points for World Cup finals results are worth twice as much as Friendlies
World Cup finals x 2.00
Confederations Cup x 1.75
Continental champs. finals x 1.75
World Cup qualifiers x 1.50
Cont. champs. qualifiers x 1.50
Friendlies x 1.00
Regional Multiplication Factor based on strength of confederation.
UEFA x 1.00
CONMEBOL x 0.99
CAF x 0.96
CONCACAF x 0.94
AFC x 0.93
OFC x 0.93
When teams from different confederations play eachother the Regional Multiplication Factor is averaged.
At the end of each year, Two awards are given. The "Team of the Year" goes to the team that notches up the seven matches of the year reaping the overall highest average number of points during the year. "Best Mover of the Year" is the one that has made the most progress in the course of the previous twelve months. | 
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