Flames coach Meck Mwase has attributed his team’s improvement on the World FIFA Ranking to the players efforts in winning the two 2021 AFCON Qualifying matches last month.
Mwase was reacting to the Flames rise by eight places from position 123 to position to 115 on the latest FIFA/Coca cola World Ranking released on Wednesday.
He said the Flames movement is a reflection of the positive results on the field of play and said the team need to continue doing well to break into the top 100.
“This is good news to us and I would like to congratulate the boys for working very hard because this is a result of the two consecutive wins against South Sudan and Uganda as well as the AFCON Qualification. As technical panel, we will encouraging the boys to continue working hard so that we move to higher positions in the next rankings. Our aim is to reach the top 100 by end of the year.
“A good ranking gives us a lot of advantages like securing friendly matches with top opposition as well as making our players marketable to European teams,” said Mwase.
The Flames would have gone more places up have they done well in A rated international friendly match against Ethiopia which they lost 4-0.
“The loss in Ethiopia was a blessing in disguise since we took a team that had not played for some time and that was a much-needed testing game because we were able to work on our weaknesses before the South Sudan and Uganda matches,” he said.
The Flames, who are the fourth biggest movers after Guinea-Bissau (108, +11), Namibia (111, +10) and Armenia (90, +9) in the ranking, registered 1-0 victories over South Sudan and Uganda last month to qualify for the AFCON finals scheduled for Cameroun next year.
Before the latest rank, Flames had remained on the position 123 for 16 months since November 28th 2019.
They are now ranked 29th in Africa and sixth in the COSAFA Region with 1162.39 points.
