Dear Scotland

So I am back working in Tokyo this week, for obvious reasons; and because my team in Japan work incredibly hard for me, I was sitting at my PC near them at 9.20pm pretending to also work hard when I received an instant message from a colleague in New York – a Brooklynite with a mild interest in soccer and a strong interest in winding me up.  This is what it said:

Ranking….	Team	Pts Sep 09…..	+/- Ranking Aug 09…………		+/- Pts Aug 09…
1	Brazil	1604	0		-38
2	Spain	1588	0		-2
3	Netherlands	1376	0		-3
4	Italy	1186	1		5
4	Germany	1186	0		-9
6	Russia	1129	0		-32
7	England	1127	0		-8
8	Argentina	1113	0		33
9	Croatia	1101	1		70
10	France	1040	-1		-19
11	USA	974	1		-17
12	Greece	971	-1		-30
13	Serbia	916	1		-9
14	Australia	907	2		11
15	Switzerland	898	-2		-32
16	Denmark	892	-1		-17
17	Portugal	880	0		-1
18	Czech Republic	870	4		20
19	Bulgaria	860	4		21
20	Côte d’Ivoire	852	-2		-22
21	Chile	846	5		29
22	Israel	844	3		22
23	Paraguay	842	-3		-14
24	Mexico	835	6		36
25	Ukraine	829	-6		-40
26	Romania	827	1		13
27	Turkey	826	1		17
28	Uruguay	820	-7		-31
29	Cameroon	819	0		16
30	Scotland	804	-6		-33

You probably know what these are – the latest FIFA rankings.  I knew this instantly because every time Scotland lose an international match, or the USA win one, my ginger New York pal Doug takes the effort to dig these rankings out to have a dig at me.  (Nice dig, Doug.)

Moving on.

I am a huge believer in serendipity.  Not the café on East 59th Street which serves frozen hot chocolate (how do they do that?); but the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate (especially while looking for something entirely unrelated, says Wikipedia, but I’ll ignore that bit as it doesn’t suit my purpose).  I believe in serendipity because usually it’s approaching midnight on a Wednesday night and I’ve no idea what to write for you, dear reader (based on polling data, I am using the singular); then serendipity intervenes, I write my column, and I get off to bed, where I toss and turn for an hour or two listening to Mrs Williamson snoring, until finally I drop off to sleep.

Anyway.  A few weeks back, I mentioned in a jokey fashion that if Scotland made the playoff draw, FIFA would fix it so the playoffs would be seeded – “so the wee teams play the big teams” as I put it (Kenny MacAskill’s Secret Masterplan Revealed, Sept 3, 2009).

Well, what do we learn this week, but Sepp Blatter has decided that the playoffs will indeed be seeded.  Ireland are outraged, and so should they be; as Shay Given says, ”The rules should be laid out clearly before any ball is kicked.”  [He later goes on to say “To change it at this stage is beyond belief” which is perhaps demonstrating a child-like naivete when it comes to football politics, unlike his world-weary team-mate Kevin Kilbane: “It is a joke, let's be honest, because they always seem to bend the rules.”]

I couldn’t agree more.

We have the world’s premier football tournament, probably the world’s biggest sporting event, governed by some fat chancer making the rules up as he goes along.  What’s stopping FIFA saying up front that the playoffs will be seeded?  Nothing.  They’re either incompetent or corrupt.  I think a bit of both, but mainly the latter.  They want the big teams – sorry, the big TV audiences – to get to the finals to make their sponsors happy, so Blatter and Warner and all the rest of those parasite leeching scumbags can maintain their first-class lifestyle in the midst of the worst global economic crisis in living memory.

So how will they decide seedings?  Well, looks like they’ll use the comically meaningless FIFA rankings.   So, France (potential TV audience: 65m) might finish second and be in a playoff, but no danger of them facing Italy (60m) should the Irish do the thing FIFA don’t want.  Maybe they’d prefer them to face plucky wee Northern Ireland (1.8m) to avoid losing 63.2m potential viewers.

I fired back to my antagonist:

Ranking…	Team………………….	Old Ranking…	Points…	Population… (m)	Points per.m…
1	Uruguay	28	820	3	273.33
2	Croatia	9	1101	4.5	244.67
3	Denmark	16	892	5.5	162.18
4	Scotland	30	804	5	160.80
5	Paraguay	23	842	6.5	129.54
6	Switzerland	15	898	7.5	119.73
7	Bulgaria	19	860	7.5	114.67
8	Israel	22	844	7.5	112.53
9	Serbia	13	916	10	91.60
10	Greece	12	971	11	88.27
11	Portugal	17	880	10.5	83.81
12	Netherlands	3	1376	16.5	83.39
13	Czech Republic	18	870	10.5	82.86
14	Chile	21	846	17	49.76
15	Cameroon	29	819	19.5	42.00
16	Australia	14	907	22	41.23
17	Côte d’Ivoire	20	852	21	40.57
18	Romania	26	827	21.5	38.47
19	Spain	2	1588	46	34.52
20	Argentina	8	1113	40	27.83
21	England	7	1127	51	22.10
22	Italy	4	1186	60	19.77
23	Ukraine	25	829	46	18.02
24	France	10	1040	65	16.00
25	Germany	4	1186	82	14.46
26	Turkey	27	826	71.5	11.55
27	Brazil	1	1604	192	8.35
28	Russia	6	1129	142	7.95
29	Mexico	24	835	107.50	7.77
30	USA	11	974	308	3.16

…

I am forthwith patenting this as the “Williamson-modified FIFA Bollocks Ranking Scale”.   It’s a population-adjusted FIFA ranking; I took the number of points in the original FIFA table, and divided that by the population (in millions) of each country, then ranked countries high-to-low.

As you can see: small countries punch well above their weight, and big countries can frankly go and lick my balls.  [Unexpected bonus for my ongoing transcontinental dialogue: USA comes bottom.]

I’m not sure this is really going to help Ireland in their predicament, because, well, even if they were the top seeds they’d end up playing the likes of France or Italy who would now be at the bottom.  But it makes me feel better having done this, and you should feel free to use it in arguments with supporters from big countries who mistake quantity for quality.  You’ll have to pay me royalties, but it’ll be worth it.

Billy.

Answer to the question in the title: “As many as FIFA World Cup ™ Sponsors can shove down his throat.”