Sherifdeen Olamilekan reports,
Amid the sufferings of the abrupt elimination from AFCON 2021 in Cameroon, the Super Eagles of Nigeria have moved up three places in the latest FIFA rankings released on Thursday, 10 February, 2022 by the world soccer governing association.
The Super Eagles, who are now third in Africa have also become the 33rd best team in the world. While previously, the Nigerian team were in the 5th position in Africa and 36th globally.
However, Senegal, the newly crowned African champions, do not only retained their position as the highest ranked African country but also moved from 20th to 18th globally- another massive reason for the Tarenga Lions to continue throwing parties after their Sunday night's victory against Egypt that helped them claim the current champions of Africa.
The Moroccans, who were knocked out in the quarter-final of AFCON 2021 by Northern African rivals; Egypt, are now the Africa’s second highest ranked team as they have also secured the 24th spot globally. While the top three best teams in the world are Belgium, Brazil and France respectively, the new third best of Africa are now Senegal, Morocco and Nigeria.
FIFA has, however, stated that standings on the ranking chiefly relies on adding and subtracting points won or lost for a game to the previous point totals rather than averaging game points over a given time period as in the previous version of the World Ranking.
The new system, according to FIFA, will largely help determine the relative strength of teams, including the logical expectations that teams higher in the ranking would advance and play the game better against teams in lower spots of the ranking.
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