Cosafa Cup affects Flames’ Ranking
Malawi national football team’s poor showing at the ongoing 2018 Cosafa Cup has reflected on the latest Fifa rankings released yesterday.
The Flames have dropped four places from 119 to 123 on world rankings for the month of June.
Though the most highly ranked in Group B at the regional competition, Malawi finished at the bottom of the table after losing to Mauritius and drawing against Botswana and Angola to exit the competition with two points out of possible nine.
The Flames are now 24th in Africa and seventh in Council for Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) region.
Mauritius have since benefitted from the win over Malawi and are up six places on the rankings from 161 to 155.
South Africa, though having dropped two places, are still the best in Cosafa while Zambia are second.
Madagascar’s impressive performance at the regional tournaments has helped them to rise eight places from 114 to 106 on world rankings.
But Flames coach Ronny Van Geneugden (RVG) argued that the Fifa rankings are not the best measure of a team’s performance.
“The rankings sometimes don’t give a real view of a team’s performance. There are teams that didn’t play games, but they still have moved up on the rankings,” he said.
He however, said Malawi would improve on the rankings once the results start coming.
“It’s a situation that we have to deal with. The results are important [for the rankings]. We have to solve our main problem which is scoring,” he said.
But soccer analyst Charles Nyirenda said the rankings are also important as they are used by European clubs when recruiting players.
“We cannot run away from the rankings. European clubs prefer to sign players that are in the top 60 on Fifa rankings and there is a good reason for that,” he said.
