Unfortunately, that could very well happen. The world’s best player according to many, including the FTBL ranting, is seeing his chances of making it to South Africa evaporate quite fast: even victories in their remaining two qualifiers cannot guarantee the Portuguese the 2nd spot in their group. They will need, in addition, that current number two in the group Sweden at least lose to group leaders Denmark. A draw between the Danes and Swedes will hand Portugal only a chance to draw level on points.

But the FTBL rating seems to indicate that Sweden are considerably stronger than Denmark at the moment: the combined FTBL rating of Swedish players is approximately 200 points higher than that of their Danish counterparts. Sweden’s leaders---Barcelona’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Olympique Lyon’s Kim Kallstrom---are 4th and 12th in world rankings in their categories, respectively. The Danes can only dream of such achievements: their best player, Arsenal’s Nicklas Bendtner has a rating of just 110.11 points and is not a regular first-team appearance at the Emirates. In the Gunners’s last 2 games, he came off the bench to play just a little more than 20 minutes.

But stats do not always tell the whole story. The Danes have already won against the Swedes in this qualification round. But Cristiano Ronaldo and partners will do well to concentrate on scoring as many goals as possible when they play Hungary and Malta.