Karl Decena, InterAksyon.com
The Philippines continued to fall in the latest FIFA World Rankings released on Thursday.
The Azkals moved down to 143rd this April from 130th last March to drop 13 spots in the world ladder. Prior to the slide, they held their highest ranking in history for three months at 127th.
The lack of matches for Filipinos this past month contributed to their fall in the rankings. 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, allowing some teams to move up or down in the rankings despite not playing any matches during a particular period.
The drop put the Philippines just fourth in Southeast Asia after topping the region for the past months. The Azkals are now behind Vietnam (116th), Thailand (140th) and Malaysia (142nd).
The Azkals have matches this April, starting with a training tour in Qatar this week that features matches against Nepal on Friday and local club Al Ahli Sports Club on Monday. A date with Malaysia for the second time this year is also slated on April 27 in Cebu. These are part of their preparations for the Asian Football Confederation Challenge Cup in Maldives in May, where a ticket to the prestigious Asian Cup in 2015 is at stake.
In Asia, Iran (37th) remained on top followed by Japan (47th), Uzbekistan (53rd), South Korea (56th) and Australia (59th).
Spain continued its reign as the number one team in the world followed by Germany, Portugal, Colombia and Uruguay.
Now it's atleast more realistic. We are for from being the number one team in SEA.
ReplyDeleteAgree
DeleteLaos na azkals
DeleteThis just shows again the ranking of teams at the lower end of the FIFA table has no real significance.
ReplyDeleteIt's just musical chairs to entertain the fans.
Upper table is also a mess, for examples Brazil at 6th, Switzerland at 8th, Greece at 10th etc are all highly controversial.
DeleteSo it's just that FIFA ranking has too many flaws in its calculating system and i don't get why they don't try to fix it. In Asia, Iran, Uzebekistan, UAE, Jordan etc suddenly skyrocketed simply because they dominated in the Asian Cup qualifiers, which gives you x2.5 weighted points. Funny part is that Japan, Australia, and South Korea automatically qualified for the Asian Cup so they didn't have to go through qualifiers, which caused a huge disadvantage to their ranking. This is the same irony which happened to Brazil, who didn't have to go through World Cup qualification as host.
Philippines having been No.1 in SEA region for a while was also a joke. It was just thanks to our Challenge Cup victories in 2012 and 2013. Challenge Cup matches, including its preliminary round, are also regarded as Asian Cup qualifier so it gives you the same x2.5 weight when you win a game, and we won 3 games in 2012 and 3 games in 2013 against minnows, which gave us huge points. In the meantime, other notable SEA rivals had to compete in the official qualifier against strong teams and they almost lost them all so they couldn't collect big points. How unfair.
Our ranking is now dropping just because last year's Challenge Cup preliminary wins are now out of 1-year period. However Challenge Cup matches are again coming soon and if we get several wins there our ranking will again skyrocket.
So in short, FIFA ranking is a bullshit. Well, it may be impossible to have a perfect ranking system, but one thing is for sure. ELO ranking is way, way more realistically informative.