Football: Seychelles drop seven places |05 September 2015

Seychelles have fallen seven places in the latest Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) rankings which were released on Thursday.

Seychelles’ poor performance at the Indian Ocean Island Games (IOIG) in Reunion was perhaps the biggest factor towards the drop as the country’s team failed to make it past the group stage, with their only victory coming via walk-over against Madagascar.

Ranked 185th out of 208 nations in August, Seychelles is now ranked as the 192nd footballing nation in the world and its seven place drop was also the biggest in this month’s rankings.

On the African continent, Seychelles finds itself ranked 49th out of 54 nations, with the top 10 made up of Algeria (19th worldwide), Côte d’Ivoire (21st worldwide ), Ghana (27th worldwide), Tunisia (33rd worldwide), Senegal (38th worldwide), Congo (42nd worldwide), Cameroon (42nd worldwide), Egypt (49th worldwide), Nigeria (53rd worldwide) and Cape Verde Islands (56th worldwide).

Today’s match against Ethiopia will hopefully help the team’s cause should Seychelles get a positive result as the lower nations will also be aiming for better results in their matches.

On the broader side, Argentina leads the ranking, while former world champions Spain (11th), Italy (16th) and France (24th) are all far from the world’s top 10.

The top 10 nations are Argentina (1,442 points), Belgium (1,269), Germany (1,248), Colombia (1,224), Brazil (1,209), Portugal (1,186), Romania (1,176), Chile (1,149), Wales (1,146) and England (1,143).

The team who made the biggest rise up the standings during the month of August is Fiji who rose 17 places to 181st from the bottom 208th place.

The basic logic of the world rankings calculations is simple. Any team who do well in world football win points which enable them to climb the world ranking.

The number of points that can be won in a match depends on factors such as the match result, the importance of the match and how strong the opposing team was in terms of its own ranking in comparison. These factors are brought together in the following formula to ascertain the total number of points.

As such, as per the ranking calculation tool that can be found on Fifa’s official website, should Seychelles manage a win against the Ethiopians today, then the country could move up to 119 points compared to the 43 points it currently has. A draw would see us move to 67 points, while a loss would see us lose one point.

The next ranking will be released on October 1.

The following is a comparison of the Indian Ocean Island nations’ rankings since the system was implemented in July 1993.

Team               Highest Fifa ranking      Lowest Fifa ranking        Average ranking

Seychelles    October 2006 – 129th         July 2013 – 200th               177.182

Madagascar    August 1993 – 81st         March 2014 – 190th        141.115

Mauritius    August 2000 – 116th         November 2012 – 203rd        153.107

Maldives    July 2006 – 126th          August 1997 – 183rd         154.399


S. N.