It’s a free fall for the Flames. Three consecutive defeats have taken their toll on the Flames who crashed to their three-year low, 10 places down from 108 to 118 on August Fifa/Coca-cola world rankings released today.
In Africa, the Flames slipped from position 21 to 33 while also shifting from fifth to seventh in Cosafa block.
Now interim Flames coach Tom Saintfiet has his work cut out for the team who last month lost to Mozambique (1-0), Zimbabwe (post-match penalties) and Angola (2-3) in a warm- up match and at the 2013 Cosafa Castle Cup in Zambia.
“As a country you want to climb but if we do well against Rwanda and more importantly in Nigeria then we can rise significantly. It’s never good to lose to Angola and draw with Zimbabwe,” the Belgian tactician admitted in an interview today (Thursday).
The Cosafa champions Zambia have remained unchanged on position 60th, 10th in Africa and number one in Cosafa showing that the updates also reflect results over a period of time.
“[This is] exactly what we expected to happen. Not exciting news. We have not performed well in recent games. To the team and the Malawi nation, we seriously need to focus on other avenues that can uplift our playing standards,” football administrator Jimmy Fombe told Nation Online after Fifa released the rankings.
Mzuzu football administrator Julius Mithi has called the slump “a disaster and was expected as the team’s performance has dwindled of late! We need good sports leadership which has the welfare of the team [at heart], otherwise [the way] we are hiring and firing coaches leaves a lot to achieve.”
On the continental level, the world’s 18th ranked Ivory Coast still rule Africa followed in order by Ghana (24 in the world), Mali (32), Algeria (34) and reigning Africa kings Nigeria (35).
Current World Cup and European champions Spain continue to top the world ladder ahead of Germany, Colombia, Argentina and the Netherlands placed s
econd, third, fourth and fifth respectively.
“In addition to the 22 Gold Cup matches, 53 friendlies were played in the past five weeks, including 46 in Africa alone, bringing the number of internationals played so far this year to 515,” readswww.fifa.com/rankings
Equatorial Guinea dropped the biggest by 32 steps to 184 whereas Mauritania are the biggest climbers by 21 ranks to 75. The first rankings were published in August in 1993 when Malawi made their best rank ever 67. The Flames worst fall was 138 in 2006.
