Canadian MNT Back up to 87th

The latest FIFA rankings came out today for the Men's National Teams and Canada has moved back up the list by 15 places to a much more respectable 87th.  This move up the chart will be very welcome for Canada as in July they had managed to hit an all time worst ranking of 105.  Now getting back to 87th in the world is nothing to get all that excited about as Canada has mainly moved past countries who did not play in the past month but it is the start of a trend that should continue for as long as Canada remains in World Cup Qualifying.

After a poor showing in this past summers Gold Cup Canada fell to that all time low of 105th in the world but now thanks to a pair of wins over St. Lucia and Puerto Rico they have reversed that trend.  The two wins gave Canada a total of 76 points in the past month according to the FIFA ranking system.  I would love to spend all day trying to explain how the FIFA rankings work but Wikipedia seems to have already done a good enough job.  The basics are that since Canada got two decent wins they were going to pick up points but the points were limited by the fact that they were playing against lower ranked opponents so FIFA rewards the wins with fewer points.

 

Despite the strength of Canada's opponents in the past month they were still the top side in CONCACAF in terms of points collected and they moved up to 8th in the region ahead of El Salvador who dropped 13 spots down to 88th.  Canada are not to far behind Trinidad and Tobago who are 7th in the region and 80th in the world but the top 6 still remain some ways off.

 

It is realistic to think that if Canada can pick up another 4 wins in this qualifying cycle they would continue to pick up a similar number of points each month.  The good news for Canada is that they do not really have any good results coming off the back of their cycle so we should just be seeing a steady improvement in their rank.  Catching Costa Rica for 6th in the confederation might be a bit of a stretch as they are currently ranked 57th in the World and are more then 150 ranking points ahead of Canada. 

 

The ranking system is often criticized and I for one am not a huge fan of it but it is nice to see that the Canadian Men's National Team are at the very least heading back in the right direction and getting back to a respectable rank.