Sierra Leone ranked 7th in Africa, 50th in the world Despite the hassles and bottlenecks in Sierra Leone Football since Madam Isha Johansen took over the reins of leadership about a year ago; the country continues to make headlines in the FIFA monthly World rankings. In the August 14, 2014 ranking, Sierra Leone ranked 7th in Africa for the first time since the ranking was introduced in 1993 and made a significant breakthrough in the world’s ranking by moving 14th places up to make the Worlds top 50 footballing nations; the best ever in the history of the country’s football. “This is a significant moment in the history of football in Sierra Leone and therefore it is incumbent on all of us (the FA, Sports Ministry, players and the nation) to ensure that we do our best to stay where we are now. In 1996, we were ranked 51st in the world and 9th in Africa but 11 years later, we were ranked 172nd (September 2007); a situation we battled tooth and nail to come out from. However, this time around, we will do our best as an FA to maintain our position on the table and probably play more friendlies on FIFA calendar dates,” Vice President 1, Brima Mazolla Kamara said. Sierra Leone dropped to 64th with 469 points and was also out of Africas top ten countries in the July ranking but this time amassed a total of 533 points (64 points more than their previous 469 accumulated in July), which might even go higher if they get a very good results in the group stages of the AFCON 2015 qualifiers against Cote D’Ivoire and Congo DR in September 6th and 10th respectively. World champions Germany continue to lead the way ahead of Argentina and the Netherlands, but Spain have jumped one position and now share seventh place with Brazil. World Cup quarter-finalists Costa Rica have climbed into 15th at the expense of the USA (18th, down 3), which means that Los Ticos are now in their highest-ever position since the introduction of the world ranking in 1993. According to FIFA, the results of 23 new international “A” matches have been taken into account for the August 14th edition of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking. Ten of these matches were friendlies, whereas the remaining 13 matches were qualifiers for the next CAF Africa Cup of Nations. It is little surprise, therefore, that the biggest movers of the month are mainly to be found in Africa, namely Lesotho (105th, up 26), Malawi (106th, up 15), Sierra Leone (50th, up 14), Benin (77th, up 14), Botswana (86th, up 13) and Guinea-Bissau (123rd, up 13). This month also sees Sierra Leone make their first appearance in the top 50. The points from the new international “A” matches have been determined by using the new confederation weightings, recalculated following the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which has led to slight adjustments in the weighting factors of most confederations. These are now: CONMEBOL 1.00; UEFA 0.99; AFC, CAF, OFC and CONCACAF 0.85.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 15:35:15 +0000