Latest FIFA Rankings Ramblings
Come on, American Samoa. Get your act together! You are still ranked dead last in the latest FIFA rankings. Surely you can get 11 guys together who can defeat Guam. My men’s league team played them last week and they have no defense. They’re nowhere near the same class as 200th ranked Aruba let alone that powerhouse known as Brunei.
If you want to make your way up the rankings, American Samoa, I recommend following the path of the United States, which has risen all the way to number six in the world. Now everyone knows that the US is not the sixth best team in the world, but don’t tell that to FIFA’s computers. The Commodore 64 machines in Geneva were super impressed that the US beat Norway’s youth team and Japan’s domestic team in recent friendlies. Apparently the computers didn’t care about the Yanks’ draw against 85th ranked Canada.
Speaking of Canada, how can the Canucks be ranked below Burkina Faso, Cuba and Mali? I know Canadian football is the punch line to a joke, but surely Canada would defeat United Arab Emirates, right? Play the game in Manitoba in the middle of the winter and Panama would have no shot against Team Canada.
And then there is Angola, my beloved Palancas Negras. Angola bowed out of the African Nations Cup in group play and still managed to move up three slots to be ranked the 60th best team in the world. I’m not sure Angola is even the 60th best team in subcontinent Africa, but I do know that it is now only one slot below Togo, which moved down three slots after garnering the same results as Angola in Egypt. Go figure.
The happiest folks are the journalists in Nigeria who will see that the Super Eagles are now the 12th best team in the world. Nigerian journalists love to proclaim how great their team is and how it deserves to be in the World Cup. If the team continues to impress the computers, pretty soon it will be ranked higher than Turkey and it will earn the title of “the best team not to make the World Cup.” Now that is something to brag about!
The next rankings will come out in March and hopefully by then the soccer folks in Pago Pago will have American Samoa heading upward and on the heels of the always entertaining Turks and Caicos Islands.
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Comments
By tomislav chagall | February 15th, 2006 at 2:06 pm 
bob,
while i agree with you that soft-drink-sponsored rankings are nowhere close to indicating the actual strength of a given football team, in nigeria’s case, i have to state the opposite: they finished third at the cup of african nations—as opposed to angola and togo who dropped out in the preliminaries.
on a more personal note, augustine »jay-jay« okocha is simply the best (with all due respect to ronaldinho): it’s a damn shame i won’t see him play against croatia in the final … can’t blame a fan for being biased! :Þ
cheers, t.
Posted from 
Germany
By Bob | February 15th, 2006 at 2:23 pm As you undoubtedly know Tomislav, Angola finished ahead of Nigeria in World Cup qualifying, which is all that really matters to the legions of us who are on the Palancas Negras bandwagon. Fans in Nigeria can celebrate their wonderful third place African Nations Cup team by watching Angola play in Germany on tv. And if we were going soley by Nations Cup finish, Ivory Coast should be ranked in the top 10 in the world. The Elephants finished second and have qualified for the World Cup!
Posted from 
United States
By Francis Nass | August 25th, 2007 at 7:51 pm I congratulate all the participants at the on-going Korean U 17 world Cup, but the Nigerian Golden Eaglets in particular. Praying for you to bring the world Cup home as you did in 1996 in Atlanta. The Brazilian style of soccer is not new, I am sure you can do what you are known for.
Posted from United States
By Francis Nass | August 25th, 2007 at 7:51 pm I congratulate all the participants at the on-going Korean U 17 world Cup, but the Nigerian Golden Eaglets in particular. Praying for you to bring the world Cup home as you did in 1996 in Atlanta. The Brazilian style of soccer is not new, I am sure you can do what you are known for.
Posted from United States
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