FIFA's Flawed Rankings

by Austin Kelley

The final four European teams to qualify for next year’s World Cup in South Africa will be decided Wednesday by the second legs of home-and-away playoffs—but not without controversy. In late September, FIFA announced that the match-ups between the eight playoff teams wouldn’t be drawn randomly as many expected, but would be seeded according to the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings. One minor problem: The rankings are notoriously untrustworthy. Read about it in the Wall Street Journal.