User:Mark J/A page I created but got deleted, which I keep for reference

The following table is an attempt to rank the world's national football teams by their performance in the seventeen FIFA World Cup tournaments that have taken place since 1930. Each nation is awarded a certain number of points for its performance in a World Cup; the more points, the better the team did.

The rule is simply; n points are awarded for winning a tournament with n teams in it, n - 1 points for coming second, n - 2 points for coming third, and so on until the team that comes last is awarded 1 point. Since the more recent World Cups have had more teams playing in them, more points are awarded for a victory in 2002 than a victory in 1966. This is therefore biased towards a team's more recent performances, which is a good thing.

The rankings for each tournament are decided using the official FIFA rankings from [http://www.fifa.com/infoplus/IP-201_06E-WC-ranking.pdf. this pdf documemt], so there can be no controversy over which teams did better than others.

The points system used in this article should not be regarded as official; however it paints an accurate picture of which teams have done better than others in the World Cup.

Notes on the positions
Unsurprisingly, Brazil comes first, thanks to its five victories, but Germany is close behind, because the teams fought in the same number of final matches (7 each). Teams that have habitually done well at the World Cup, such as Serbia and Montenegro and Belgium, are ranked higher than teams such as the Netherlands, which although a better team, have usually done badly in the World Cup.

Africa's best team is Cameroon, Asia's best team is South Korea, and North America's best team is Mexico.

The highest-ranked team not fighting in the 2006 World Cup is Belgium.