Nation World Ranking

[anystroem]

I apologize if this has been covered before, but I've tried to search through the forum without finding anything that come close to clarify this to me.

First off, I'm cheating... to understand how the game works, and if I'm just banging my head against the wall, or if I can actually make a difference if I only stay patient.

At this point, I'm trying to understand what affects world ranking.

I understand that if I win a cup, the nation ranking improves.

However, it seems as if a handful of nations have a ranking of N/A, such as Tuvalu.

Therefore, I created and populated the Tuvalu clubs (non-playable) with awesome players. I also created other Tuvalu players that play pro-ball in the top leagues around the world.

I then took control over all major national teams and scheduled friendlies with Tuvalu, as they don't seem to be involved with any other national competition. After four years, Tuvalu's men's team is still undefeated, beating teams like Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Germany, England, Italy, and Holland.

However, Tuvalu's ranking is still N/A.

I was ready to give up, thinking it for sure will not happen, but then all of a sudden , I found that Tuvalu's U-19 and U-21 teams are competing in the World Cup tournaments appropriate to each age group (and yes, those teams were loaded with talent too and had been winning practice games for a few years)?!?!?!?!?

So, now I wondering if anyone knows, can a team that is seemingly not part of the FIFA ranking initially actually get on the grid and advance (even though it's completely unrealistic)?

[podunkboy]

because they're not a member of FIFA, it's likely that they can't be ranked in-game. As far as I know, the world rankings are FIFA world rankings.

[anystroem]

Thank you for your reply!

What you wrote was my initial thought too, but, and here comes possibly the dumbest question ever asked on these boards, in such case, why would Tuvalu's U-20 end up in a the u-20 World Cup? Isn't that a FIFA tournament? (That's what messes with my head).

Also I'm sorry for recalling the situation wrong in my initial post when I wrote that it was Tuvalu's U-19 and U-21 teams that played in the world cup. It was not. I've got a lot of things going on in this one! ;-)

The year in the game is now 2030, and the U-20 tournament they played in comes up on their history page as the 2029, U-20 World Championships - Runner Up. I wish I could produce a screenshot to show you, but that doesn't seem to work for me either (Hope SI won't 86 me from buying FM in the future due to "user ignorance and stupidity").

I'd love to hear back from you.

[podunkboy]

I'm certainly no expert on football, and the internet's not very forthcoming re: FIFA, but apparently the U-20 World Championships is organized by FIFA but allows non-FIFA nations to qualify. Since players can play for one nation in youth competition (limited to ages under 21) and then declare for a different nation as a senior player if they have a "clear connection" to that nation (21 and over).

Any Player who ... [assumes] a new nationality and who has not played international football [in a match ... in an official competition of any category or any type of football for one Association] shall be eligible to play for the new representative team only if he fulfills one of the following conditions:

(a) He was born on the territory of the relevant Association;

(b) His biological mother or biological father was born on the territory of the relevant Association;

© His grandmother or grandfather was born on the territory of the relevant Association;

(d) He has lived continuously for at least five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant Association.

If this is the case (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, which I often am), Tuvulu's under-20 team could play in the U-20 Championships, and then those players, assuming they have a connection to another FIFA-affiliated team and are of sufficient quality, can play as seniors for a World-Cup-eligible team.

It's probably the same reason that foreign youth players on my Scottish Premier League team can train in Scotland, play for their home U-19 national team, and if they stick around until they're 23, can declare for Scotland, if they wish.

Again, that's just my understanding, there are a lot of rules out there regarding football and I haven't read most of them.

[ryanlion28]

if you managed a country like tuvalu on fm, there should be the opportunity to join fifa, if their league's reputation is raising and their good enough to make the step up they should, gibraltar very recently became members of UEFA and South Sudan are the most recent FIFA members

[anystroem]

if you managed a country like tuvalu on fm, there should be the opportunity to join fifa, if their league's reputation is raising and their good enough to make the step up they should, gibraltar very recently became members of UEFA and South Sudan are the most recent FIFA members

I agree, but in fairness, I didn't manage Tuvalu. It is a non-playable team/nation. What I did was create Really good Tuvalu players, and added them to the three Tuvalu teams (also non-playable). Then I took control over other nations and scheduled friendlies, wondering if Tuvalu's success there would impact its ranking, which it didn't despite the team winning.

Where I got confused was that all of a sudden I saw Tuvalu-U20 team appear in a FIFA tournament, but despite its success (runner-up), Tuvalu still didn't gain any points or increased ranking.

However, Podunkboy was kind enough to explain why that is to me. Big thanks.

I guess there are so many great things one could add to this game, but in truth, what I did with my Tuvalu experiment is probably not the intended use for this game anyway. If one wanted to add a nation to FIFA, one probably should be the nations Soccer Federation Representative, and not just a club manager. ;-)

I just wanted to see if a country would/could rise, and perhaps help bringing up an entire region of the world in terms of reputation, respect, and # of teams in the international tournaments. It doesn't seem as if that is really happening though (I'm also goofing around with the Caribbean island nations in a similar fashion to Tuvalu and Oceania).

It would be fun if one could play in these little island leagues though! LOL! Tuvalu has three teams in this game... Five in RL, I believe. It'd be a fun 4 game season (if they play both home and away) with lots of time left over for pre-season training and beach parties! :-D

[anystroem]

I'm certainly no expert on football, and the internet's not very forthcoming re: FIFA, but apparently the U-20 World Championships is organized by FIFA but allows non-FIFA nations to qualify. Since players can play for one nation in youth competition (limited to ages under 21) and then declare for a different nation as a senior player if they have a "clear connection" to that nation (21 and over).

If this is the case (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, which I often am), Tuvulu's under-20 team could play in the U-20 Championships, and then those players, assuming they have a connection to another FIFA-affiliated team and are of sufficient quality, can play as seniors for a World-Cup-eligible team.

It's probably the same reason that foreign youth players on my Scottish Premier League team can train in Scotland, play for their home U-19 national team, and if they stick around until they're 23, can declare for Scotland, if they wish.

Again, that's just my understanding, there are a lot of rules out there regarding football and I haven't read most of them.

Wow! Well, thank you!

That is some great research, and thank you for doing that! Very impressive!

This absolutely settles my questions about why Tuvalu's ranking is N/A while the U-20 team participates in the U20-WC!

Makes total sense!

Thank you!

[podunkboy]

It would be fun if one could play in these little island leagues though! LOL! Tuvalu has three teams in this game... Five in RL, I believe. It'd be a fun 4 game season (if they play both home and away) with lots of time left over for pre-season training and beach parties! :-D

there is a downloadable database over on FM Scout that features 54 playable nations/leagues, and I'm thinking Tuvalu might be in there. *looks in his download file* Yep, that's one of them, also Vanuatu, Armenia, Cook Islands, Fiji...might be something to check out.

[anystroem]

there is a downloadable database over on FM Scout that features 54 playable nations/leagues, and I'm thinking Tuvalu might be in there. *looks in his download file* Yep, that's one of them, also Vanuatu, Armenia, Cook Islands, Fiji...might be something to check out.

How cool. How does that work? Do you get to append those kind of leagues into the big game, or is it a league all by its lonesome? :-)

Also, I looked over at the FMScout site, and under the FM2011 download tab, but I can't find the download you're talking about. Is it for FM11 or is it for another version of FM? (Sorry about all the questions)

[podunkboy]

How cool. How does that work? Do you get to append those kind of leagues into the big game, or is it a league all by its lonesome? :-)

Also, I looked over at the FMScout site, and under the FM2011 download tab, but I can't find the download you're talking about. Is it for FM11 or is it for another version of FM? (Sorry about all the questions)

Oops, it's probably for FM-13, might run on FM-12, earlier than that, probably not. You download the file, un-zip it if necessary, and drop the it into the Editor file into your FM save file in Documents. Then when you start up a new game, you can load in whatever country edits you want active, so you can load in Fiji and Vietnam (edited/created databases) as well as the Australian leagues, or Peru or wherever.

But I don't know about the active availability for FM-11 databases now, last time I went looking for a good FM-11 database, the links were down.