EVER since I can remember, I have been interested in politics. My Mum wanted me to have a hobby and I thought that world domination sounded fun, less fiddly than model aircraft and less boring than stamps. It has been a bit annoying that I haven’t even managed to establish domination of Pinner, but on the whole it has been great.

However, I now realise that I only chose politics because, when I was a child, they hadn’t yet set up The Rec.Sports. Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF). For this organisation specialises in two of the activities that men like best — football and listing things in order.

On their extraordinary website, www.rsssf.com, contributors from all over the world have posted lists of facts about football. It is possible to find out who was the Swiss Player of the Year 1972-73 (Karl Odermatt), to read a full list of Albanian players who have been part of championship-winning sides in other countries (such as Hysen Zmiyani, who helped Al-Nasr Ryadh to sweep to the Saudi Arabian championship in 1995) and to find a list of the worst teams in the world (the winner being SSA Antwerpen, who came bottom of the Belgian Antwerpen fourth provincial league in 1996, losing all their games and conceding a goal every ten minutes).

Most of this information is provided without comment, but there is one thing that does get RSSSF contributors angry. World poverty. Just joking, it’s the Fifa rankings.

Rather incautiously, football’s world governing body ranks national sides based on their performance both in friendly and competitive matches. This month’s Fifa/ Coca-Cola world rankings are topped by Brazil, with France in second place, Spain in third and Argentina in fourth. Holland are fifth, incidentally, while Scotland, their Euro 2004 qualification play-off opponents, are 58th. According to Fifa, Wales have a slightly easier task in their play-off since, although they are 59th, Russia, their opponents, are only 28th.

The problem is that the system Fifa uses to calculate these rankings is deeply suspect. In 1998, Egypt were ranked seventeenth equal with France. I don’t think it was just home advantage that led to the latter being the one that won the World Cup.

Dr Alex Morton and Henry Stott, who produce the Fink Tank Predictor, have been taking a look at how Fifa’s rankings are produced. It is hard to get a ranking just right. You have to decide whether a friendly is more important than a competitive game, whether goals or results count for more, how much weight to give victories against poor sides and so on.

Among the methods Fifa employs are making the first goal count for more than subsequent ones, giving much greater weight to a nation’s best seven results in a year and ensuring that no game produces a negative result (“in order not to punish lack of success”). This produces some anomalies — a 7-1 defeat can be better for your ranking than a 1-0 defeat and countries who play more games benefit from the “best seven” rule because their worst performances count for less.

The RSSSF contributors’ critique of Fifa has led them to compile a number of options. Scotland will be pleased with the Elephant rankings because it puts Holland in only ninth place and the Scots 33rd. Wales, on the other hand, now appear to face a harder task. They come 57th, but the Russians are 22nd. Then again, the ELO rankings put the French top, the Dutch fourth and Scot-land 47th.

Morton and Stott are clear about the problem with all world rankings, including Fifa’s. Weightings are attached to goals, home advantage, match status and so on for arbitrary reasons, because they feel right. The Predictor assigns weight for only one reason — to increase the ability of the ranking to predict the outcome when sides meet. Weights are set at the optimal level to produce predictive success judged by applying them to past games. This seems a much more sensible method.

So we have begun constructing our own Fink Tank international rankings and Predictor in time for Euro 2004. Now we, too, can become RSSSF hate figures. Who needs politics?

finktank@thetimes.co.uk