This meant that a match would not result in the two or three points for a win and one for a draw, as is standard in most national league competitions.
[1] One of the changes that was introduced when the ranking system was revised in 1999 was dubbed the "scaling up", where the points on offer for a match were roughly multiplied by ten, with the addition of more factors.
The women's rankings were based on a procedure which was a simplified version of the Football Elo Ratings.
Until July 2006, however, FIFA believed that awarding points simply on the basis of win, draw or loss, would not meet the requirements of a reliable and accurate world ranking system.
In the event of a match being decided on penalties, the winners received the correct points for the victory.
In order to encourage more attacking football, points given for goals scored were weighted far more heavily than the deduction as a result of conceding, though most teams were more concerned with the tournament or match at hand than their position in the world rankings.
When a match was decided on penalties, only those goals scored in playing time were included in the total.
To allow for the extra handicap incurred by playing away from home, a small bonus of three points per match was awarded to the away team.
For tournaments played on neutral territory, but with a home team, such a World Cup Finals, there were no bonus points given.
If teams from two different confederations were involved in one match then the factor applied was the average of the two continental weightings.
Based on the above considerations, the total number of points credited to a team after a match depended on the following criteria: Where:
In order not to punish a lack of success too severely, a negative points total was rounded up to zero.
For simplicity in this instance it is assumed that three teams of different strengths are involved in a small friendly tournament on neutral territory.
This number was determined by deciding how many fixtures in a season an "averagely active team" would participate in.