World ranking
World rankings are global lists of people or groups of people, mostly athletes or sports teams, sorted according to performance and success-related criteria . Performances, placements or victories in international competitions and tournaments are usually used as criteria for the ranking .
The criteria can be set by a globally recognized body, e.g. B. by an international sports association . In the evaluation, often only the services from a certain period are evaluated, e.g. For example, those of the past six months (“semi-annual rankings ”), twelve months (“annual rankings”), or even four years (e.g. FIFA world rankings with weighting of individual years). There are also other variants, e.g. B. All-time world rankings that relate to the entire past of the competitions in question.
For a long time there were world rankings only in individual sports . The best known is probably the tennis world rankings , but there is also a golf world ranking list , a badminton world ranking list , and world rankings have long been known for boxing and chess (see rating ). There are also world rankings for exotic sports such as poker , headis , table hockey and dominoes . In the meantime, team sports also have world rankings, such as football for clubs (see IFFHS ) and national teams .
World rankings are u. a. used to determine the start or competition order in international competitions. In the case of soccer World Cups , the FIFA world rankings are taken into account in the composition of the groups. The tennis world ranking serves as the basis for the seeding list in tournaments. From 1984 to 2004 the UCI world rankings were decisive for the starting positions of the teams in road cycling .
