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Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
ZIFA’s failure to organise full international friendly matches for the Warriors has seen the flagship side slip out of the top 100 on the latest Fifa/CocaCola World Rankings.
According to the rankings released yesterday from the Fifa headquarters in Zurich, Swizterland, the Warriors slipped from 92 last month to 101 on the world stage while on the African continent they are now the 27th best team, down from 24 last month.

The Warriors have not been active since their 2-2 draw against Tanzania in the first round second leg Nations Cup qualifier in which they were eventually knocked out with Zifa subsequently resolving to dissolve the senior national team for the second time.

Zifa said it was now concentrating on junior national teams with their prime area now being the Olympic squad that goes into official battle in February when they begin their Olympic qualifiers against Swaziland.

World Cup quarter-finalists Algeria remain the best ranked African team on the world stage at 15 and there is no member of Cosafa in the top 10 African countries.

Bafana Bafana, under Shakes Mashaba, are the best ranked Southern African country after jumping 10 places from 67th to 57th in the world. They are 12th in Africa. Belgium have jumped one spot to fourth, swapping places with the Netherlands. Former world champions Spain have slipped down to 10th.

The biggest movers were Togo, who jumped a massive 73 places to 52nd while Azerbaijan had the worst month, slipping 31 spots.

Calculation of points for a match
The number of points that can be won in a match depends on the following factors:

• Was the match won or drawn? (M)
• How important was the match (ranging from a friendly match to a Fifa World Cup match)? (I)
• How strong was the opposing team in terms of ranking position and the confederation to which they belong? (T and C)

These factors are brought together in the following formula to ascertain the total number of points (P).

P = M x I x T x C

The following criteria apply to the calculation of points:

M: Points for match result

Teams gain 3 points for a victory, 1 point for a draw and 0 points for a defeat. In a penalty shoot-out, the winning team gains 2 points and the losing team gains 1 point.

I: Importance of match

Friendly match (including small competitions): I = 1.0

Fifa World Cup qualifier or confederation-level qualifier: I = 2.5

Confederation-level final competition or Fifa Confederations Cup: I = 3.0

Fifa World Cup final competition: I = 4.0

T: Strength of opposing team

The strength of the opponents is based on the formula: 200 — the ranking position of the opponents.

As an exception to this formula, the team at the top of the ranking is always assigned the value 200 and the teams ranked 150th and below are assigned a minimum value of 50. The ranking position is taken from the opponents’ ranking in the most recently published Fifa/Coca-Cola World Ranking.

C: Strength of confederation
When calculating matches between teams from different confederations, the mean value of the confederations to which the two competing teams belong is used. The strength of a confederation is calculated on the basis of the number of victories by that confederation at the last three Fifa World Cup competitions. Their values are as follows:

Conmebol 1.00
Uefa 0.99
Afc/Caf/Ofc/Concacaf 0.85