The US Women's National Soccer team has always been great. With the 2019 World Cup Group stage finishing up for the US today with a 2-0 win over Sweden, I wanted to look at how their FIFA ranking has fluctuated over the years. Not surprisingly, since the first rankings of 2008, the have been ranked #1 for all but 3 quarters (the FIFA website shows the ranking quarterly for each year) and in all of those quarters they were #2. Similarly, Germany has stayed consistently in the #2 spot over the past decade, falling to #3 briefly, as well as making a few appearances in the #1 spot. But other currently high ranked teams have not been so consistent. England (currently ranked third after peaking at #2 in 2017) for example wasn't even in the top 10 as recently as 2014.

Overall there has been very little movement at the extreme top of the rankings, but from #5 on down there has been much more movement and teams have had the opportunity to make significant movement up the ranking over the years, however, moves of more than 10 spots (even over an entire decade) are fairly rare, the top 20 teams mostly just jostle around with each other for rankings. The largest mover in the current top 20 is South Korea (current #13) who was as low as #26 in 2005. Check out how the ranking have changed over the year in the graph below.

All data obtained via https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/women/.

Another point to look at is the USWNT point total over the years. FIFA assigns teams a points ranking based on the results from each international match. There is a fairly complicated algorithm that they use, but generally, winning matches will make your point total go up and losing will make it go down. The quality of the opponent and the score affect the points awarded. So has the US's point total been going up? Not really in the last 5 years. After hitting a near all-time high of 2229 points in 2014 (the all-time high is 2233 from Aug. 2010), they have steadily declined in points and currently sit at a historic low of 2101. But while their point total has declined, they have maintained their number 1 ranking and stayed consistent in in their margin over the next best team.

During the 5-year decline in points, the have maintained the #1 ranking for all but three quarters and have often rated over 50 points better than the next best team. These two trends could be showing that more parity is taking root at the top of the game. The theory would be that as lower team improve, they gain points off of higher teams (although it's not a zero-sum system) and bring everyone closer together. A more thorough analysis that looks at more teams might be able to yield some more answers, but that's for another day. Below is the US point total and margin compared to the next best team since 2003.

USA point total on right axis and margin over next best team of left (negative margin means USA was not ranked #1)

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