Nigeria’s women’s national football team have improved their world ranking as they moved up two places in the latest women’s ranking released by the Federation of International Football Association (FIFA), about 40 days before the commencement of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
The USA is still the best-ranked women’s team in the world, while Bhutan are the greatest movers, up from 178th position to 171st.
Meanwhile, Randy Waldrum’s side maintained first position in Africa, followed by South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire.
Although, this is still way below their best-ever ranking of 31, which they achieved in July 2019. The Falcons could climb even further if they have a great outing at the coming World Cup as the next rankings will be released days after the completion of the tournament on August 25.
The team has played two friendly matches between the last rankings that was released on March 24 and they won both games.
They beat Haiti 2-1 on 7 April, and got the better of World Cup hosts New Zealand 3-0 on 11 April.
“National teams around the world have been engaged in warm-up matches for the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023, while the Asian qualifiers for the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament Paris 2024 have also been taking place,” FIFA statement reads.
“Those games have led to quite a few changes in the global hierarchy, except at the very summit, with the Top 5 remaining unchanged. USA (1st, -) are still out front, followed by the European quartet of Germany (2nd, -), Sweden (3rd, -), England (4th,-), and France (5th, -).
“There have been changes below, however, with Spain (6th, plus 1) and Canada (7th, minus 1) swapping places and Brazil (8th, plus 1) and the Netherlands (9th, minus 1) doing likewise, along with a good few other teams in the Top 50.”
MOLATsportgist 