Following disastrous campaigns in the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers and the 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup Preliminary Round, the Golden Jaguars, Guyana’s senior men’s football team, has dropped to a dismal ranking of 173rd out of 210 affiliated nations.
This was revealed by the world governing body yesterday following the official publication of the August rankings. The Guyanese dropped eight positions from their previous ranking of 165th, following a record of three consecutive losses spread between the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers and Gold Cup Preliminaries.
Guyana lost to St Kitts and Nevis (3-0) and Puerto Rico (2-0) during World Cup Qualification. In the regional tournament, the Golden Jaguars suffered an embarrassing defeat to Guatemala (4-0) in the first round. Overall, the team has suffered four losses in their last five fixtures.
The team lost a staggering 32 points due to the aforementioned results to sit on 959 points. Their previous points total was 991. Presently, the team is sandwiched between 172nd ranked Caribbean unit St. Vincent and Grenadines, and Asian outfit, Indonesia, on 174th.
Guyana’s best ever ranking was 86th and was achieved in 2010.
On the other hand, their worst position was 185th in 2004. Overall, Guyana’s average ranking has been 150th. The next ranking is set to be published on September 16.
The Guyanese will be unable to improve on their ranking as they are not scheduled to return to international play until May 2022. The men’s FIFA World Ranking is a ranking system for men’s national teams in association football, currently led by Belgium.
The teams are ranked based on their game results with the most successful teams being ranked highest. The rankings were introduced in December 1992, and eight teams (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) have held the top position, of which Brazil have spent the longest ranked first.
A points system is used, with points being awarded based on the results of all FIFA-recognised full international matches. The ranking system has been revamped on several occasions, generally responding to criticism that the preceding calculation method did not effectively reflect the relative strengths of the national teams.
The current version of the ranking system was first used on 16 August, 2018, adapted from the Elo rating system used in chess.
