By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
In spite of playing several international but inconsequential matches during the FIFA Windows this year, Nigeria’s senior women’s football team, Super Falcons still plunged downwards in the latest FIFA rankings.
This is even as the reigning World Champions, United States of America (USA) Women’s National Team (USWNT) has for the fifth year in a stretch ended the year as the top-ranked women’s football team in the world despite missing of Tokyo 2020 Olympics Gold medal earlier in the year.
According to the last FIFA Rankings for 2021 released on Friday, December 10 by the world football governing body in Zurich, Switzerland, USWNT retained the first place despite having suffered two defeats to Sweden (3-0) and Canada (0-1) before ending its Tokyo Olympics campaign with a Bronze medal.
However, this didn’t affect the team’s placement on the final FIFA Rankings released on Friday as the World Champions finished top of the rankings for the year ahead of Sweden, Germany, France, and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup beaten finalist, the Netherlands.
Sweden only lost the Gold medal game at Tokyo Olympics to Canada; the game the team lost in 2021 including friendly games and FIFA Women’s World Cup Qualifiers.
Third-placed Germany didn’t qualify for the Tokyo Olympics but are unbeaten in its last seven games after a 1-0 defeat to France on June 10, 2021.
France has won its last seven games since suffering a 1-0 loss to Germany.
Fifth positioned the Netherlands has a six-match unbeaten run defeat to the USWNT.
Canada finished the year in the sixth position ahead of Brazil, England, Spain, and the People’s Republic of Korea.
Meanwhile, the Falcons dropped three places from their previous status as the 38th ranked team in the world, according to the FIFA ranking released on Friday. The Super Falcons accrued a total of 1584.09 points, dropping 30.04 to place 41st in the latest ranking.
Regrettably, the poor performances of the reigning African Champions recently especially the two loses to Jamaica (0-1) and Team USA (0-2) during the Summer Series in Austin, Texas last June and another 4-2 humiliation by South Africa in the 4-Nation Invitational Tournament in Lagos last September ensured that Nigeria did not earn any point.
Before then Super Falcons had in February played in another worthless competition tagged Festival Women’s Trophy Antalya in Turkey where they managed to beat a lowly rated CSKA women’s football club 1-0 and struggled to edge Uzbekistan senior women’s football team 1-0 in the second match.
But the Falcons recent 0-1 loss to bitter rivals Ghana Black Queens in the return leg of the African Women’s Cup of Nations (AWCON) Morocco 2022 qualifiers tie in Accra, the only FIFA approved match, may have contributed to the country dropping three places in the latest rankings.
In all, the Super Falcons under the tutelage of new Head Coach, Randy Waldrum have played a total of 10 international matches and in the process won five, lost four and drew one match against Portugal in Houston during the Summer Series.
With the above poor results recorded by the team during the year under review, it would have been a big surprise if Super Falcons had climbed up the rankings this year and the slide is likely to continue next year except the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) secures Grade A FIFA approved international friendly matches with the likes of France, Canada, England and Netherlands.
Nevertheless, at 41st position in the world, Nigeria is still the top team in in Africa with five other countries making up the Top Six in the continent. Below is the countries with their world ranking are Cameroon (53rd), South Africa (56th), Ghana (57th), Cote D’Ivoire (61st) and Egypt (72nd).
In the meantime, no fewer than eight nations have joined the worldwide girls’s hierarchy, a few of them for the primary time (Niger, Sierra Leone and South Sudan) and others after a few years of absence (14 within the case of Benin and Liberia).
The FIFA Women’s rankings is released every three months and the next one is expected to be released by March 2022.
