Hey FIFA, WTF?

FIFA's recent update to their global ranking system has South Africa's steady progress upwards going sharply in reverse as we slid almost 9 places down the ladder. This despite winning and drawing our last two matches? It's taken a little over a year to claw our way up to 38 from 90 and now this setback, most likely due to a devaluation in the points gained during the first phase of this year's World Cup.

FIFA's system uses a formula to calculate the value of a match, but there has got to be some sort of imbalance when a drop that large happens to a team that has shown no discernible fault in performance. The Elo ratings, an adaptation of a ranking system used in the World Chess Federation, has us at 47.

We won't get too worked up about it. FIFA has promoted England to fourth ahead of Argentina and Brazil, which is just plain crazy. Any system that arrives at that conclusion clearly has a few kinks that need to be ironed out. Two big movers who overtook us are Jamaica and Belarus. Jamaica are now ranked at 38 and we're pretty sure that Bafana would smoke (ahem) their team. Maybe we need to organise a friendly.