Anything you can do, we can do sillier

Yesterday, I mentioned FIFA's world football rankings, not expecting that today someone would come up with a ranking system that makes that look like a model of sanity and rationality. Yes, step forward UEFA's seedings for Euro 2004! Throwing the world rankings out of the window, UEFA have determined to produce something much better that includes their favourite word - 'coefficient'.

Now, if you or I were going to draw up the top seeds for Euro 2004 we'd obviously include Portugal as the hosts and France as the holders - but who should fill those other two spots? Germany, perhaps, as the best European side at the last World Cup. Italy, maybe, who got to the final of the last European Championships. Spain, who FIFA rank as the third best team in the world or maybe even England who've only lost one compeitive match under Sven-Goran Eriksson. Or, perhaps you'd go for a system based on the qualifying matches for Euro 2004 and the last World Cup and come up with Sweden and the Czech Republic. Yes, somehow UEFA have managed to rank the Czechs as the third best team in Europe - obviously they are a good team, having beaten the Netherlands in qualification for Euro 2004, but seeing as how they failed to even qualify for the last World Cup, you think that might count against them. You might think that, but obviously you wouldn't get a job with UEFA thinking like that.

Still, it does make the draw slightly better for some sides - England, Italy, Spain and Germany now all know they'll avoid each other in the group stages and only one of them is going to end up in a group with France that will instantly be called the 'Group of Death', especially if the Dutch end up in it as well.