The United States has reached its highest FIFA ranking ever, coming in as the sixth best soccer team in the world, up from 10th last month (AP). Certainly, the team has looked pretty good over the last few months, destroying teams like Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama in World Cup qualifiers, and has most recently advanced to the semifinals of the CONCACAF Gold Cup. (It plays Honduras tomorrow for a spot in the finals.) But Team USA's ascendancy in the FIFA World Rankings, one of the most complicated point systems in the world, has less to do with its strength than its schedule.

The U.S. squad has inadvertently fattened up its ranking by feeding on its continental competition. Because it is playing in World Cup preliminaries and the continental championships, the number of points the team receives for a win are increased by half, regardless of the strength of the side it is facing. The FIFA rankings take into account a dizzying array of statistics (see here), including the odd fact that teams lose fewer points for goals conceded than they gain for goals scored ("to encourage attacking football," according to FIFA). By continuing to win, even against mediocre competition, the U.S. continues to rise over teams like France and England, which are entangled in the much tougher European qualifiers.

The Germans experienced an opposite effect earlier this year, as they slid out of the top 10 to 21st, falling behind teams like Japan and Iran, even as they continued to beat them. The reason? Germany is hosting the World Cup in 2006, meaning that they don't have to play in any qualifying tournaments. All of the games the team does play are labeled "friendlies," and it doesn't receive the ranking bonuses that other teams playing in continental competitions do. Jürgen Klinsmann, the German coach, went so far as to call the rankings "a bad joke" (Deutsche Welle). In a show of just how fragile the rankings are, Germany rose 10 spots to 11th in the world this month on the strength of a third-place finish in the FIFA Confederations Cup. FIFA weights games in that tournament by a factor of 1.75.