Philippine football vaulted to a 13-year high position of 169 in the latest rankings released by the International Football Federation Wednesday. The Philippines, which is skipping the 2010 World Cup qualifiers, actually jumped 10 places from its previous position last month, even without playing a single international match from February until mid-April. Johnny Romualdez, the Philippine Football Federation president, said the FIFA rankings are based on the results of the national team the past four years.
"The poor results in the past four years are dropped off and the better recent performances have been given more weight in the rankings," Romualdez explained.
The new ranking has pushed the Philippines to No. 8 in the Southeast Asian region, behind Thailand (119), Singapore (124), Vietnam (140), Indonesia (148), Myanmar (154), Malaysia (154) and Laos (165). In ninth position is Cambodia (170), followed by Brunei (173) and Timor Leste (199). The last time the Philippines reached the No. 169 rank was in November 1994. A month later, the country dropped two places at 171 that was only matched 12 years later in 2006.
A scoreless draw with Myanmar in the Southeast Asian Football Championships in January has so far been the best result for the Philippines this year, after registering a second-place finish in the ASEAN Championship Qualifiers in Bacolod City in November 2006. *CPT
No comments:
Post a Comment