Shepolopolo Rise In FIFA Women’s Rankings

Shepolopolo has continued its quarterly rise for a third successive time and reached the top 100 of the FIFA Women’s Football Rankings.

The Zambia women’s national team is the 100th placed side as of the latest rankings released on March 27 in Zurich.

Shepolopolo rise six places from 106 in December 2019 after earlier making a nine-point jump last October of the quarterly rankings.

Zambia are 12th from 13th in Africa where Nigeria lead at number 38 in the World while second placed Cameroon drop two places to 51st.

South Africa (53), Ghana (60), Cote d’Ivoire(63), Equatorial Guinea (71),Tunisia (78),Morocco (81),Mali (83) and Algeria (85) are the top ten CAF teams while Senegal are eleventh at number 87.

Shepolopolo’s rise is thanks to their exploits over the last ten months in the 2020 Olympic Games football qualifiers in which they lost only one and drew one of their seven games.

The highlight came in early in March when Shepolopolo beat CAF’s second highest ranked side Cameroon to Africa’s lone automatic Tokyo Olympics qualifying place that will see the latter play Chile in a playoff for the games that have been rescheduled to 2021 in Japan due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Shepolopolo, whose best ranking was 95th in 2009, have been on the rise over the last 24 months under coach Bruce Mwape since qualifying to the 2018 Women’s AFCON where they lost one game but finished third in Group B on 4 points.

Zambia later made their debut COSAFA Women’s Cup second place finish last August when they lost 1-0 in the final to hosts South Africa before embarking on the Olympic quest later in September.

Source: Lusaka Times