Ivory Coast stars Didier Drogba and Bakery Koné are part of one of the fashionable picks for World Cup 2010 (Image: Stefan Meisel)

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Mock World Cup draws are fun, and even more so if you have some idea of which nations are strongest coming out of World Cup Qualifying.  The first commenter to Friday's article noted the strength of our draw's Group B, but if you have not noticed the strength of Côte d'Ivoire, the quartet may look  top-heavy, destined to yield Brazil and the Netherlands.

Even amongst the experts, perceptions of strength vary wildly, but over at Set Piece Analysts, Kartik Krishnaiyer has polled nine writers from around the blog universe and gained an aggregate opinion.  Full disclosure:  I was one of the nine.

It's no surprise that names like Brazil, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands would be the consensus favorites.  Beyond those four, we start to see not only our first surprises but hints  of the expected, impending change in the international soccer world.

All polled were asked to rank the 32 qualifying nations from 1 to 32, with points assigned (32-to-1) to each place.   Here are the results:

The advantages of using a poll (as opposed to a formula) is flexibility.  

If one player is playing particularly well, a voter can pick up on that.  It would take a number of positive results (at the team-level) for FIFA or Elo to detect how well Didier Drogba is playing for Côte d'iviore.  Very few systems would sniff-out the fact that Cote d'Ivoire's draw with Burkina Faso (last month) came with Didier Drogba a.) on the bench to start the match, and b.) coming off the bench in the 71st minute to immediately score the game-tying goal.   Polls can pick up on that.

Polls can also pick up on injuries. Ratings systems will be slow to respond.  We see this in the ranking of the United States.  After asking voters, it was clear the U.S.'s ranking was influenced by the absence of Charlie Davies and skepticism regarding the Summer 2010 form of Oguchi Onyewu.  That explains why the U.S. polls at 8 to 10 ten spots  below their conventional rankings.

Us pollsters are also giving the strong African teams an advantage in our rankings.  South Africa, Algeria and Nigeria do not get a benefit, but we seem to agree Cote d'Ivîore, Cameroon, and Ghana are likely to outstretch their ratings.

Implicit in that statement, though, is a nod to the ratings as some kind of authority.  I hate to disagree with my preceding sentence, but I'm not sure how much we can glean from either the FIFA rankings or Elo.  The FIFA rankings are grossly underestimating the Asian nations (save Australia, who just joined the Asian confederation).  For example, South Korea - who have finished 4th and 17th at the last two World Cups - are ranked 52nd despite going undefeated in AFC qualifying.

With both the FIFA and Elo rankings, there tends to be a bias towards UEFA  teams.  Those nations end up bolstering their ratings through playing each other often.   It is rare that you see a European team play a meaningful friendly against  an African power (though Germany hosted Cote d'Ivoire to a 2-2 draw last Wednesday).  That's where a poll like this  - undeniably imperfect - can be informative.

Tomorrow we'll take a closer look at two ballots - mine, and that of Jordan Wise from World Soccer Reader - to look at how two voter's perceptions can vary.

What do you think of the SPA rankings? Do you think they are helpful? Be it FIFA, Elo, or SPA, who are the big misses, the right-ons, and the other teams that you think will stay in the headlines come June 2010?

Let's tie up some loose ends, shall we?

• Beyond the mock draw, another interesting part of last Friday's article was the poll, which asked where you thought the U.S. would finish if they were draw in a group with Argentina, Cameroon, and Portugal. Over 200 voters (thank you!) weighed-in, and though the poll is still open, current returns have 79% of readers predicting an early exit for the Yanks, given that draw.
• The groups for the 2010 African Cup of Nations were drawn on Friday, something the Thierry Henry controversy completely overshadowed. Yet another reason to distain that hand ball. The host country, Angola, got an easy draw (thanks to their seed), while Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire were drawn together. I will talk more about this great tournament next week.
• A good question from the comments in Friday's article: What would have happened if Costa Rica won? How would the pots have changed? That question was from user Bingham Lab. Bingham, there seem to be two possibilities: a.) While in 2006 FIFA drew from three even pods of eight, they did not do this in 2002 (the 32-team field only dates back to 1998). FIFA could elect to have a seven team pod and keep CONMEBOL and Africa together, or potentially slide New Zealand in here as a compromise solution, or b.) CONCACAF getting a fourth team combined with the powers of CONMEBOL being seeded could be justification to move the South American teams into the Asia/Oceania pot. 
• One thing informing which side FIFA's likely to take on this: CONCACAF is not well respected throughout the rest of the world. Even if CONCACAF had gotten a fourth team, it would have done little to change the perception that the football from this region is Mexico and a number of nations closer to Asian quality than African. The biases in that perception are innumerable, though the United States' success this summer in South Africa did start to chip-away at these barriers.
• User Ryan Rosenblatt has been doing his own mock draws, which you can find here. Helpful: Ryan does some draws with CONCACAF in the same pot as Africa. While I think the odds of that happening are no better than 5-to-1, that's far from a long shot. It could happen.  Just like Ryan's comments, his draws are informative, fun.
• User Shoot McGavin asked if there is precedent for replay. There are two examples that people have referenced in the last week: one a result of a sporting gesture from the beneficiaries; the other, an edict from the governing body. In the 1999 English FA Cup, Arsenal scored a match-winning goal against Sheffield United after their opponents had played the ball into touch with the intent of getting an injured Blade treatment. Arsène Wenger offered a replay of Arsenal's 2-1 win. United accepted and lost the replay, 2-1. At the international level, a replay was ordered for a first-leg of the 2005 World Cup qualifying playoff between Uzbekistan and Bahrain. The referee wrongly awarded Bahrain an indirect free kick after an Uzbekistan player infringed upon the penalty box during his teammates' successful penalty kick. The kick should have been retaken. As a result, FIFA ordered a replay, resulting from Uzbekistan's successful protest.