FIFA ranking!
Every month FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, releases position of its members on the map of the soccer world. Accordingly, FIFA released its latest standing on September 16, retaining Argentina, which has not won any major tournament since 1993, as the No. 1 team, with Belgium, another side that has no record of capturing any international tournament in history, rated 2nd. Contrarily, Olympic Champions Brazil is in the 4th position just behind World Champions Germany.
Copa America Champions Chile is sixth and Europe Champions Portugal is 7th, which has proved that the ranking system is based on speculation, and not on the reality.
The FIFA World Ranking is a ranking system for men’s national teams in association football, currently led by Argentina. The teams of the member nations of FIFA, football’s world governing body, are ranked based on their game results with the most successful teams being ranked highest. The rankings were introduced in December 1992, and eight teams (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) have held the top position, of which Brazil have spent longest ranked first.
A points system is used, with points being awarded based on the results of all FIFA-recognised full international matches. Under the existing system, rankings are based on a team’s performance over the last four years, with more recent results and more significant matches being more heavily weighted to help reflect the current competitive state of a team.
In Africa, it is Ivory Coast; and in Asia, it is Iran, are the top teams. There is a question about Iran because they have not annexed any international cup after 1988, whereas Japan, ranked sixth, won the Asia Cup four times between 1992 and 2014. The sad commentary is that Bangladesh has ranked at 185 stand of the FIFA ranking. It is, indeed, a good performance document under BFF President Kazi Salauddin. So, we think that the FIFA should calculate the points based on the teams’ annual performance.
Abdullah Akber
Dhaka
