arbitrary constant

Three observations follow from England's win over Estonia last week:

1. The Match of the Day commentator, on at least three occasions during the edited highlights, mentioned that Peter Crouch had an excellent scoring record against teams that had a low world-ranking. More specifically, he has scored 7 goals in the last 6 matches again England’s lowly-ranked opponents (including, I assume, a hat trick against Jamaica).
2. The same Match of the Day commentator highlighted that Estonia are ranked below both Ethiopia and Hong Kong in FIFA's official rankings. Indeed they are, being currently 110th compared to Ethiopia's 99th and Hong Kong's 109th (England, somehow, are 8th). I am somewhat suspicious, though, of the reasons behind the commentator's using Ethiopia and Hong Kong as the yardstick against which to measure Estonia — any one of Bahrain, Botswana, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Gabon, Uganda, Malawi or Benin would have done, as would Iceland, Canada, Cyprus, Iraq, Austria or Wales. My suspicion is the commentator's yardstick was a throwback to the days of empire (Hong Kong) and Britain-as-saviour (Ethiopia / Live 8).
3. Finally, even if England do make it to the European Championships next year, then I'm predicting now that they won’t get past the quarter finals, irrespective of the draw.

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