The Philippines lost its spot as the top-ranked Southeast Asian team in the FIFA rankings released on Thursday.
The Azkals slid to 130th after placing at a historic high of 127th in the ladder.
That put them at second place in Southeast Asia behind Vietnam (125th), which leaped 18 spots, the highest in the rankings. They are followed by Malaysia (141st), Thailand (149th) and Singapore (149th).
Under new coach Thomas Dooley, the Azkals battled against Malaysia to a scoreless draw last March 1 before yielding a tight 1-nil result against European side Azerbaijan last March 5.
In Asia, Iran remained on top followed by Japan, Uzbekistan, South Korea and United Arab Emirates, which entered the top five this month.
Spain remained on top of the rankings, followed by Germany, Argentina, Portugal and Colombia.
World governing football body FIFA calculates every country’s ranking based on match results (a win, a loss or a draw), its importance (i.e. a friendly or a World Cup match), and the strength of the nation’s opponent ranking-wise. These points are then accumulated from the country’s past results in the previous four years.
Enough for the rankings we need titles now!!
ReplyDeleteWhat's important is we beat some good teams here in south east Asia ....
ReplyDeleteWe know our level against the South East Asian teams now. What we need to do is have a match either friendly or tournament against the Heavyweights of Asia - Japan, North and South Korea , Saudi Arabi and Iran..
ReplyDeletenothing against it but we should first try to win vs. Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia first. Friendly matches vs. strong oppentents are welcomed as this would bring the team further and they could learn a lot even they would suffer heavy defeats...
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