Over a stretch when almost all ASEAN Football Federation teams saw action early this month, the Philippines has remained as the best ranked AFF team in the latest edition of the FIFA World Ranking released yesterday by the governing body of world football.
The Azkals actually moved up by a spot from 125th to 124th, despite registering zero points in this month’s friendly defeats to Bahrain and North Korea.
Having 297 points last month, the Philippines have 271 to date. The dip in points could have meant a slide down the table but fortunately for the Azkals, other teams suffered more damage such as North Korea, whose 3-1 win against Azkals did little to make up for the catastrophic 5-2 loss to Vietnam.
Speaking of Vietnam, they are now the second highest ranked AFF team mainly due to their emphatic win over the North Koreans. It allowed the Vietnamese to move five places up the table.
As for other Southeast Asian teams, Thailand’s poor World Cup Qualification form is responsible for their fall to third in the region. To be fair, the Thais were the lone team in the area to have played competitive matches and a positive result against at least one of Asian middleweights United Arab Emirates and Iraq may have enabled them to jump rather than slump.
The ongoing qualification for the 2016 Suzuki Cup has also seen three teams benefit from seeing action with Brunei, Cambodia, and Laos made noticeable movements while Indonesia continue to gain momentum after FIFA lifted their suspension in August.
Elsewhere in the region, Timor-Leste, Malaysia, Singapore and the inactive Myanmar fell down the index with Singapore taking the hardest hit as they descended 16 spots to where they were last month.
The FIFA ranking uses a sophisticated formula aimed to take into account the performance of teams in a span of four years. The Azkals’ presence on top of the pile in a regional sense highlights the sustainability of the team’s rise in the sport. The hope the Azkals now have is to finish the year higher than where they are now with the region’s Suzuki Cup looming on the horizon.
