Malawi Scorchers still outside top 120 on FIFA Rankings

* Despite their winning COSAFA Women’s Championship in South Africa in November

* Zambia — whom the Scorchers beat 2-1 to win the COSAFA Women’s Championship — are 5th in Africa and 65 in the world

* Only South Africa and Zambia are the COSAFA sides in the top 10 while Namibia are 18th and 118 in the world

By Duncan Mlanjira

Malawi Scorchers need to constantly play against officially top ranked teams if they are to earn more points on their FIFA World Rankings as they do not appear in the top 120 list of teams as released on Friday by the world football governing body.

Basics of the ranking method — as explained on FIFA website — are that a result of a team’s match is converted into a value (actual) and through some formulae, the difference in rating points (strength) results in a ‘predicted’ value.

Should the ‘actual’ value be better, then the new ranking will be higher than the old one and one conclusion that can be drawn from this basic rule is that the rating points earned by a team for a win is dependent on the strength of the opponent.

A win over an extremely weak team scarcely improves their standing in the rankings, while a win over a stronger team is awarded with a clear increase of the ranking’s value.

Winning or losing is, of course, the most important criteria, but goal difference and goals scored are also taken into account while results earned in the FIFA Women’s World Cup is four times bigger with World Cup qualifying matches’ difference is a factor of three.

At major competitions, a lot more rating points can be earned and lost. However, for friendly matches amongst the top 10 ranked teams, the prestige of these matches make them of more importance and hence also a better estimate of the strength of the teams involved.

Therefore, the friendly matches amongst the top 10 ranked teams are awarded double importance compared to regular friendlies.

So, despite their winning the regional Confederation of Southern African Football Association (COSAFA) Women’s Championship in South Africa in November — that also earned them to be nominated for the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Women’s Team of the Year Award — the Scorchers still are outside top 100.

This also comes after finishing as runners-up for the previous two COSAFA Women’s Championships — thus they need to up their game and aim for qualification into the CAF Women’s Africa Cup of Nations and the FIFA Women’s World Cup if they have to earn more points for consideration of earning favourable rankings.

Top ranked sides wishing for strength-testing opt to play against fellow high ranked teams, which is a disadvantage for the Scorchers as they would be ignored for such.

Nigeria — who are the most successful international women’s football team, having won a record 11 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations and have been to the Women’s FIFA World Cup finals since 1991 — are top ranked team in Africa and 36 in the world.

South Africa are second (51 in the world) followed by Morocco on third  (58) Ghana on 4th (64) and Zambia — whom the Scorchers beat 2-1 to win the COSAFA Women’s Championship — at 5th in Africa and 65 in the world.

On 6th place are Cameroon (67); 7th Côte d’Ivoire (71); 8th Tunisia (78); 9th Mali (81) and Equatorial Guinea on 10th (82).

Only South Africa and Zambia are the COSAFA sides in the top 10 while Namibia are 18th and 118 in the world. By earning the 65th position in the world, Zambia achieved their highest ever points totals — alongside Tanzania, Puerto Rico, Kosovo, Solomon Islands, Spain, El Salvador, Nepal, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

The rankings are still led by Spain, champions of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 and the UEFA Nations League 2024 while defending European Champions and the World Cup runners-up, England, climbed to second place.

France are on 3rd while the United States — the most successful team in women’s World Cup history — slipped two spots to 4th as Germany slipped to 5th and the other top 10 teams are Sweden (6); Japan (7); Netherlands (8); Canada (9) and Brazil 10.

Meanwhile, Libya, Eritrea, Chad, Sudan, Djibouti and Mauritania have provisionally been downgraded for not having played more than five matches against officially ranked teams while teams that have not played for 48 months do not appear in the rankings — as according to CAF.