Football: Fifa world ranking |09 August 2013

 Seychelles making its way back up

Seychelles is slowly starting to make its way back up in the world rankings and this is obvious in the latest rankings released by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) for the month of August.

Seychelles has moved to 195th place – up from 200th in July – with 24 points in the world rankings released yesterday.
In Africa, Seychelles only moved one place and now lies in 51st place out of 54 countries.

The rise in rankings comes after Seychelles took part in the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Cup last month.

Despite losing both matches played – one of which was a very disappointing 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Mauritius – Seychelles has gained five points as allowed by the Fifa ranking system to move up the standings.

It is hoped that through further matches in the future, the national team can continue to improve and hopefully match our best ever worldwide ranking of 129th achieved back in 2006. At the time we were ranked 36th in Africa.

Meanwhile, Spain remains atop the world rankings with 1484 points, followed by an unchanged top 10 of Germany (1257), Colombia (1219), Argentina (1210), Netherlands (1165), Italy (1142), Portugal (1099), Croatia (1098), Brazil (1089), and Belgium (1079).

The highest ranked African nation is Ivory Coast, who are in 18th place. They are followed by Ghana (24 worldwide), Mali (32 worldwide), Algeria (34 worldwide), Nigeria (35 worldwide), Cape Verde Islands (36 worldwide), Burkina Faso (48 worldwide), Cameroon (51 worldwide), Tunisia (53 worldwide), Zambia (60 worldwide).

The biggest movers are Mauritania who moved up 21 places to 151st from their previous ranking of 172nd, while Equatorial Guinea dropped 32 places from 62nd to 99th worldwide.

S. N.