World Cup Football 2014 - The Draw - Part 1

Today was a big day for most of the nutty sports fans around the world. Yahoo.com only seemed to be interested after the event and only then to say that the USA was in the Group of Death. Yes - I am talking about the World Cup Football 2014 Draw. You should all know the results ... but in case you have been living under a rock (or in the USA), here is a link to FIFA.

Being the actuary that I am, I had to analyze the results based on some sort of ranking.  Lucky for me, I don't have to invent my own ranking ... I can use FIFAs or ESPNs.  After a quick review of ESPNs, I decide that what ever they are using to arrive at their ranking list, one of the ingredient must be illegal ... so FIFAs ranking it is.

Now, using the FIFA rankings, I develop two measures of opponent strength - one absolute and one relative.  Here is an example (using Australia's group) ...

Team	Ranking	Absolute	Relative
ESP	#1	27.7	26.7
NED	#9	25.5	16.0
CHI	#15	23.0	8.0
AUS	#59	8.3	-50.7

How is the absolute strength calculated? Easy - it is the average of the rankings of the three opponents. Aust = (1 + 9 + 15) / 3. A lower score implies that you are playing against tougher opponents. The relative strength is the absolute strength minus your ranking.