adminGrace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE’s Mighty Warriors are slowly slipping out of the world top 100 after they further slid down on the latest FIFA rankings.
The Mighty Warriors are now number 97, sliding four places from the position they occupied four months ago.
Zimbabwe are 12th on the continent.
According to the rankings which are released after every four months for the women’s football, Sithetheliwe “Kwinji” Sibanda’s troops paid heavily for their poor showing at the COSAFA tournament.
The team was booted out in the group stages in the regional tournament which ended last week in South Africa.
The Mighty Warriors won their two opening matches against Namibia 1-0 and Eswatini 3-0, but fell 1-0 to Uganda in a match in which they only needed a draw to reach the semi-finals.
Zimbabwe have only won the COSAFA Cup once in 2011 on home soil at Rufaro.
Then under former coach Rosemary Mugadza, the Mighty Warriors upstaged South Africa 1-0 in a nervy final.
From there encounters involving the two neighbours were always explosive, taking turns to beat each other.
Both South Africa and Zimbabwe represented Africa at the Summer Olympic Games in Brazil in 2016 and were part of the African Cup of Nations in Cameroon later that year. The Mighty Warriors, however, appear to be paying the price of playing less football compared to previous years and have not refreshed their team significantly in the past years, with a number of old horses who were part of the rebuilding exercise which began in earnest in 2010 still commanding regular places in the team. Their rankings have been dropping and they were at their best in 2013 when they were ranked 82.
They were on 88th position this year before the worrying slide. South Africa’s Banyana Banyana are among the best movers and are now ranked 50 in the world. In Africa, Banyana Banyana who beat Africa Cup of champions Cameroon in Port Elizabeth in the COSAFA Cup final last weekend are now fourth best team on the continent.
South Africa have also qualified for the next year’s Africa Cup of Nations, while Zimbabwe will watch from the sidelines after losing to Zambia in the last qualifying round. West African giants Nigeria are the best ranked team on the continent and 38th on the world rankings, followed by Ghana, 47th on the globe.
Cameroon lie third in Africa and 49 in the world with South Africa fourth while Equatorial, Guinea complete the continent’s top five.
Online Reporter