Ghana Moves Up in FIFA Rankings

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As expected, the latest FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking shows the effects of recent FIFA World Cup? qualifying matches. Four-time African champions Ghana were the biggest movers on the continent and also the second biggest mover of the month after Greece after jumping 18 places to 71st on the back of impressive results in their 2006 World Cup qualifiers.

Ghana thumped South Africa 3-0 in the second round of Group Two matches last month and are currently lying second behind Bafana Bafana with four points from three matches, two points adrift of the leaders.

The Black Stars are, however, a place below Libya who jumped 12 places up to 70th while the Cape Verde Islands are Africa*s third biggest movers after gaining 12 places up to 134th.

Zimbabwe and Morocco are the only top 10 ranked African teams to have gained on the world rankings as Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria all tumbled while South Africa and Mali remain unchanged.
Cameroon remain the highest ranked African team but they dropped four places to 16th, Nigeria fell two to 18th, Senegal slumped two to 28th, Morocco moved two up to 31st, Egypt dropped five to 34th, Tunisia fell two places to 35th and Algeria tumbled five to 57th.

Morocco took over from Egypt as Africa's number four team following the Pharaohs' first three matches of the 2006 World Cup qualifiers in which they lost at home to Cote d*Ivoire and drew 3-3 with Benin.

World champions Brazil are still the best team followed by France, Spain, the Czech Republic, who jumped 11 places to fourth, and Holland while the newly crowned European champions Greece jumped 21 places up to 14th, possibly the greatest ever number of places in the upper reaches of the ranking.

The ranking list is produced by a computer program, which assigns a team points for every match, according to clearly defined criteria.

The factors taken into consideration include winning, drawing and losing, number of goals, home or away match, importance of the match and also regional strength.

According to Fifa, the basic idea behind the world rankings is the same as that for a normal league championship where a team can win a certain number of points for each match, depending on the results and then the points are totalled to come up with a table.

But unlike in normal league championships, a team's points for a match in the world ranking do not depend solely on whether they win, lose or draw.

Also affecting the total for a match will be the number of goals scored and conceded, the venue and the importance of the match.

In addition, the strength of the opponent is considered so that a win over a weakly-rated opponent will earn fewer points than one against a strongly-rated one.

This means that a win will not simply bring three points and a draw one, as would happen in a national league championship.