Does FIFA need help from university rankers?

At the recent International Rankings Expert Group (IREG) conference at the New University of Lisbon, Simon Marginson of the London Institute of Education raised some chuckles by imagining what would happen if the winner of the football World Cup was decided, as the world's top universities often are, by multi-indicator rankings.

He suggested that if the winner of the World Cup was determined by the methods of global university rankings then there could be a 50% weighting for goals scored, 20% for the size of the teams' fan bases, 10% for player endorsement and 20% for media coverage.

This seems a little conservative. Here are some more ideas about improving the World Cup by incorporating the insights and methods of leading global university rankings.

Perhaps we could have an indicator for the Top Party Team, one based on players' salaries or transfer fees or inlinks to the teams' websites.

Another possibility would be diversity, ethics or sustainability-based ranking indicators perhaps rewarding teams according to their gender diversity or players riding bicycles to training or doing community service.

An interesting approach would be to  combine goals scored during the tournament with those in previous competitions going back to the earliest games. FIFA could also include an indicator that would allow players to move from one national team to another and then transfer their goals scored to the new team. This proposal might be impractical because of possible perverse incentives.

There was an interesting idea about university rankings from a Russian social science school based on a brilliant and highly distinctive and innovative methodology.  This could be applied to the World Cup although it would give Nepal or Brunei the same chance of winning as Brazil or Germany.

Alternatively FIFA might consider ranking teams by using reputation surveys with five or six different channels, internationalisation (percentage of players signed by clubs in other countries), ratio of administrators to players and the number of times each player is mentioned in the sports media.

However, the the best approach for FIFA might be to adopt the methodology of the "gold standard" of university ranking. The flagship indicator would be based on the insight that goal scoring habits and practices vary from country to country and from match to match and that counting the number of goals scored in a game in an absolute manner is a "mortal sin". So in each match the result would be adjusted according to whether goals resulted from a penalty or free kick, the number of defenders between the striker and the goalkeeper, distance from the goal, wind direction, the altitude of the ground, and hostility or support from spectators.

Added to this would be a regional modification whereby the number of goals scored would be divided by the square root of the average number of goals scored in a game by teams from the region where the country is located. This modification is necessary because footballers in some countries do not have the opportunity to network with players in other countries.

Going off topic a bit, maybe  FIFA could ask the Oscar awards to introduce best football actor awards for skills in faking injuries, diving in the penalty areas or saying that it was all due to team spirit and the support of our wonderful fans.