The Footie Fool

Holy crap. Just when you thought that being ranked #87 and tied with the likes of Albania and the U.A.E. was bad enough, out comes the new FIFA rankings that shows the Canadian senior men’s team has plummeted 16 places to #103, beating our previous low of #101 in December 1998.

Whoohoo! We are number one (hundred and three)! Ranks right up there with “peace, order and good government” as an inspiring rally cry.

I know that the FIFA rankings are often seen as flawed and can easily be picked apart as rather arbitrary and not truly indicative of what is going on, but they are still important numbers. Who hasn’t felt that nationalistic surge of pride when they see their country rise in any kind of ranking system.

But beyond the pride comes the real danger that our players will have huge difficulty in securing positions on professional teams in the bigger leagues. As Sportsnet points out:

It also makes life difficult for players looking to obtain work permits overseas. It’s hard making a case that someone is a must-have player when his country languishes below St. Vincent and the Grenadines (ranked 100th with a population of 118,000 as of last July) in the world rankings.

How do we fix it? Well, a head coach, CEO and technical director would help. All three positions are STILL vacant. And we are heading into a Gold Cup summer, something that should help our rankings -providing we win or draw some games. After all, you have to win or draw to gain points, and that is something we have managed to do in just 13 of the 230 matches covered in the 4 year rating period FIFA uses for ranking.

The nice thing about being so low is that there ain’t many places to go but up.