Sepp Blatter's mathematical odyssey

I always love it when FIFA announce their international football world rankings, as they seem to reflect the relative strengths of teams in a universe that's similar, but not entirely identical to ours. For instance, England have already qualified for Euro 2004 and lost a friendly game to Denmark at the weekend, Turkey were runners-up in England's group and lost a playoff game to Latvia last weekend. So, of course, Turkey move up in rankings and England go down. However, both sides are ranked as being worse than that well-known major footballing power Mexico, who are, of course better than the United States side who, er, beat them in the World Cup last year.