Martin O’Neill’s men likely to be fourth seeds in World Cup qualifiers

The Republic of Ireland have left themselves with a lot of ground to make up on Fifa's international ranking list in June if they are to end up amongst even the third seeds when the draw for the World Cup is made in St Petersburg on July 25th.

Martin O’Neill’s side has moved up four places to 62 in the latest edition of the Fifa list but having failed to beat Poland at home last month, they remain 32nd in Europe with Israel 44th in the overall list and 28th amongst the Uefa nations currently on course to take the last spot in Pot Three for the 2018 qualifiers.

There is considerable scope for movement immediately above Ireland off the back of the games scheduled for early June and several teams above Israel, principally Northern Ireland, Hungary and Serbia, are still in the mix.

All currently enjoy a significant ranking points advantage over Martin O’Neill’s men, though rescuing the situation is not entirely out of the question.

The rankings are based on a fairly complex calculation of points awarded for results achieved over the last four years and Ireland have a couple of things going for them.

Notable exception

For a start, almost all of the other teams vying for a top 28 spot, Northern Ireland being a notable exception, presently have only one game scheduled for the end of the season.

Ireland’s two, the friendly against England and Euro2016 qualifier against Scotland, offer the possibility to secure a large number of points if wins can be secured.

Ireland’s points tally would go up slightly even if both games were lost as games played in the last 12 months count for more those in the preceding years (which decline in importance on a sliding scale) and points are averaged out according to the number of matches played in a year with the result that the modest return from the four friendlies played in early summer 2014 have been taking a toll on everything since.

With those results slipping out of the current year’s calculations and Ireland’s total then averaged over nine rather 11 games, more recent outings, chiefly the ones against Georgia, Germany and the United States will be worth more although this benefit will in turn be offset slightly by the wins over Italy, Scotland and Northern Ireland in 2011 ceasing to count at all.

Ultimately, there are so many variables that it is impossible to be precise about how the Irish might steal into the top 28 European sides, equivalent to an 18 place rise on the wider list as things stand.

But it would be pretty much impossible without beating Scotland, already acknowledged by O’Neill to be a “must win” game in relation to this campaign. Victories in both games would most likely be required unless an awful lot of the other teams slip up.

The Irish management team then will have to wait to see how the likes of Serbia, Israel, Turkey and Albania get on against Denmark, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kazakhstan and France respectively.

England are 14th on the latest Fifa list, 10th when the non European nations are excluded. As things stand both Scotland and Wales would also be second seeds having been fourth seeds for the Euro qualifiers,