Belgium has played 15 competitive matches (qualifiers, Euros, Nations League) since the beginning of 2021. They are 10-3-2 in those games. France, to pick another highly ranked European team, has played 14 competitive matches in that same time frame. They haven't lost any of them! But on the other hand, they've only won eight of them. 8-0-6. England, on the other hand, is 14-0-4. But England surely started 2021 ranked well below both Belgium and France, so they had a lot of ground to make up. And their WC qualifying group was, well, really bad, and you don't get as much of a bump for beating San Marino (or is it Dan Marino?), Albania and Andorra twice each in qualifiers as you would actually beating teams with a pulse.
Or, long story short, who knows?
Having said that, the current system is surely better than they one that they used to use, which as Switzerland showed to good effect, actually rewarded teams for not playing friendlies. Under that system the US could play a friendly against Germany in Germany and beat them and have their number of ranking points actually go down. Which was completely insane. Their current system is a modified ELO system, so winning a game is always at least a small benefit to your ranking points and losing a game always costs you at least a small number of ranking points.
