Kate Obodo
7 September 2008
Like their male counterparts, the Super Falcons remained rooted one the same spot in the FIFA Ranking for the month of September, placing 25th in the world but maintained her leadership as Africa's best for 10 years running.
The Falcons did not gain any point and their poor outing at the just concluded Beijing Olympic Games where they lost all three group matches may have contributed to the static position on the ranking that is conducted on a quarterly basis for the female teams.
Coming behind Falcons on the African ranking are their west African rivals, the Black Queens of Ghana who place a distant 42nd in the world. Both teams are the only African sides in the top 50 teams in the world.
Surprisingly, Morocco come next as the third best in the continent and 66th in the world, just one and three steps ahead of South Africa and Algeria on 67th and 69th respectively. Cote d'Ivoire are sixth in Africa and 73rd in the world, Tunisia are seventh and 75th while Mali are eight and 77th.
The Cameroonian ladies are very much unlike their male counterparts who are Africa's best ranked team as they occupy position nine in Africa and 79th in the world, just one step ahead of Senegal who are 10th on the continent and 80th in the world.
Three-time Olympic champions, USA lead the women with Germany, Brazil, Sweden, North Korea, Norway, France, Denmark, Japan and Canada following in that order. The USA stay top of the ranking despite their costly defeat to Norway in their opening match, while Brazil, who gained the most points, climb one place (3rd, up 1) at the expense of Sweden (4th, down 1), who were previously ranked below Marta, Cristiane and co. a year ago. Brazil are now threatening to leapfrog world champions Germany, who are ranked almost 60 points behind the USA - the largest ever gap between the two long-term leaders. Australia are among those to make a slide down the latest ranking, falling two places (14th, down 2) as their victories in friendly matches were not enough to compensate for defeats to Japan and Korea DPR in the AFC Women's Asian Cup. By contrast, Turkey (64th, up 6) and Kazakhstan (59th, up 4) are among the biggest climbers.
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