Southgate Rankings are an attempt to quantify the subjective sense of belonging that accrues around a team over time. The further a team is over the red line in the table—the Southgate Parallel—the more strongly they are felt to belong in whatever class the line delimits (in this case, the quarterfinals of Euro 2008). For more information about the Southgate Rankings and how they work, see this post.
Southgate Rankings, Euro 2008
| SgR | Team | Trending | Group |
| 8 | Germany | + | B |
| 7 | Italy | / | C |
| 6 | Portugal | + | A |
| 5 | France | - | C |
| 4 | Spain | / | D |
| 3 | Holland | - | C |
| 2 | Croatia | + | B |
| 1 | Czech Rep | - | A |
| -1 |
Russia | + | D |
| -2 |
Romania | + | C |
| -3 |
Sweden | / | D |
| -4 |
Greece | / | D |
| -5 |
Poland | / | B |
| -6 |
Turkey | / | A |
| -7 |
Switzerland | - | A |
| -8 |
Austria | - | B |
| +=Improving -=Declining /=Static | |||
The table reflects the growing consensus among fans and the media that Germany are the favorites to win the tournament. Portugal have received enough attention (largely thanks to the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo) to move them provisionally above a declining French team, although I sense that they could trade places after just one or two matches. (The ethereal shared consciousness that the rankings reflect is quick to respond to any positive showing from France due to their recent record of success, while Portugal are relatively unproven.) Interestingly, the table also reflects the fact that Greece have retained very little of the respect they gained after winning the tournament four years ago.
If the rankings above are accurate, they suggest that the tournament draw was relatively in line with popular sentiments, with only one "deserving" team structurally barred from reaching the quarterfinal—and, conversely, one "undeserving" team structurally guaranteed to take its place. The deserving team will come from Group C, where one of France, Italy, or Holland will fail to pass the group stage, and the undeserving team will come from Group D, where one of Sweden, Greece, or Russia will pass.
Of course, it's possible that more teams from below the line will reach the quarterfinals, and more teams from above it will be kept out. I'm talking about the maximum possible convergence between the collective sense and the results of the tournament, and the structure of the group stage means that if the collective sense of these teams' belonging is completely predictive of match results, one deserving team will still be left out.
What do you think? Does this SgR set match your sense of these teams' places? As ever, it was thrown together with little forethought, as excessive thinking can numb the connection to the field of collective apprehension on which SgR depends. I sense a great deal of fluidity in the spots between -2 and -6, and am, as always, open to arguments if you think a team should be moved.
Updated Southgate Rankings will be published throughout Euro 2008 (although as they are meant to quantify something deeper and murkier than on-pitch results, they may not precisely reflect a team's win-loss record in the tournament).
For what it's worth, I think the rankings are cruelly unfair to Poland, who won their qualifying group and beat Portugal while doing it. But my sense is that they've received very little credit for either accomplishment.
This looks just about right but I would switch Russia with Sweden and Romania with Greece.
If Switzerland and Turkey are at -7 and -6, how is it possible that the Czechs are only +1?
It would seem to me that if one is indeed tracking qualification for the quarters (and not chances of ultimate success) then there has to be a certain symmetry to the table.
But do you think the Czechs are perceived as stronger than any of the teams above them in the table?
The table is only tracking the teams that are felt to belong in the quarters, regardless of group affiliation. To me, it seems like it would be felt collectively as a large surprise if France didn't make the quarters, but only as a small surprise if the Czechs didn't, even though, given the relative difficulties of their groups, their actual chances of getting through are probably about the same.
I guess it's all about my pre-post-modern worldview.
If the Swiss and Turks don't make it, the Czechs have to.
I also think that there are definitely linguistic-based differences to expectations, even when one controls for home country bias. And as the consensus continental opinion (whether in Italian, German, Spanish or French) is that Domenech is out of his mind, I don't think anyone here would be shocked if France goes home early.
Structurally, two teams from Group A have to make it, of course. But I'm not using the table to try to predict the actual quarterfinal; rather to draw up a sort of ideal quarterfinal based on widespread feeling about the teams.
Feelings which are culturally influenced, certainly, which is one reason I'm curious to hear from as many people as possible about their sense of the correct order of the table.
My sense of France when I was putting together the list was that everyone agrees they're in decline (hence the minus sign), but that they've had so much success in the last ten years that they still have a certain aura of strength. I also think their position is unstable, and that they could move significantly up or down depending on early results in the tournament.
How far down would you move them?
Using your methodology, I would probably make France 2 and Holland 1.
I hadn't paid attention to the trend markings. What is the basis for Germany's plus sign? They have looked rather unconvincing to me against Belarus and Serbia.
To me, too, but they're the oddsmakers' favorites by a substantial margin and virtually all the pre-tournament analysis I've read either picks them to win outright or puts them on a shortlist of the likeliest teams. That's due in part to their relatively easy draw, but I still have a sense of a cresting wave of belief/expectation behind them.
So the plus sign isn't based on their recent performances so much as on the fact that they seem to be more imposingly on everyone's minds even than they were before the World Cup.
Brian, I have been thinking about this, and I applaud your calibration of what is a difficult and sensitive set of notions about superiority. In my blunt-axe worldview I see a similar dividing line as the Southgate Parallel, but without any arithmetic backup to my own rankings I conduct a broad division between Smug & Non-Smug. Smug Teams are historic winners who continue to enjoy the expectation of success, have entire systems of propagation [and propaganda] in place from their supporters, "footballing traditions" that create self-perpetuating stereotypes and win - or lose - matches for them, and, at least among their English-speaking fans, seem to have moral judgments attached to their results.
Obviously the Non-Smug Teams, on this basis, outnumber the Smug Teams fairly heavily. For me, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Holland are all Smug and look set to remain so, regardless of this tournament's outcome. I am reluctant to include Portugal because of their relative lack of success and their geocultural overshadowing by Spain and Brazil, but Martha told me recently that 12000 fans recently paid to watch them train; a casual look at their expensive team and high-profile manager might indicate that they are ready to take their place in the sun.
Everyone else remains in the Non-Smug category for now, even the staggeringly well-off Russia and Euro Champions Greece; it remains to be seen if the tournament changes anything for them.
[Supporting one Smug team disallows me from supporting any of the others, but damn those Dutch are a fine lot.]
I think the Smug/Non-Smug Parallel is the long-term ranking of which the Southgate Parallel is meant to be the medium-term equivalent. Once your team crosses that line, it takes an enormous stretch of sustained winning or losing to put you back on the other side of it. In the early 50s, Hungary would have been the Smuggest team in the world, but they lost their Smugness through years of collapse, and today it's hard to imagine how they could ever be Smug again.
I think Southgate Rankings could be seen as an attempt to capture individual moments in the glacial transitions between Smug and Non-Smug. Incidentally, I think your division of the Euro teams is exactly right, and that one of the reasons a tournament like the Euros is so interesting it that it dramatically increases the possibility of teams moving up and down the list. Portugal could end the tournament in the lower tiers of Smug or well down in the basin of Non-Smug, and while none of the other Smug teams probably stands in danger of demotion, our sense of their relative Smugness can and will change in a way that it doesn't in odd-numbered years.
Germany had some Smugness taken off them today, I'd say.
I think much of Germany's smugness came from without rather than within the squad.
Ballack's facial expressions aside, I agree. I'd guess that the kind of smugness Roswitha had in mind had more to do with the assumptions of the supporters than with the attitude of the squad.
Ah, yes yes — the thought of Hungary also occurred to me, as did, perhaps, Uruguay, in the world rankings? In direct opposition you might say France have achieved Smugness in a relatively meteoric fashion, considering they were hardly a world power before '86, and have failed to qualify for a couple of tournaments in between then and now.
I thought of applying something similar to clubs in Europe, but am finding it more difficult — local traditions and the patterns of the win/loss data over a century of footie are complicating the criteria. Might it be objectively unfair to include Barcelona without including Espanyol, for example? If Scudetti add to the historic accruing of Smug, then Genoa should outstrip Roma, and probably does, in the minds of its supporters. I suspect the Sg Rankings will be far more useful in the case of clubs since it places more restrictions on the sample data wrt time and money and all that.
A - most certainly the German team seem to be unexceptionably nice young men. But as Brian said, you know.
Of course Ballack is Ballack.
Long may he wave.