Malditas up 2 notches

After its historic semifinals run in the recently concluded 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, the Philippine women’s football team achieved another feat after improving their International Football Federation (FIFA) ranking.

The Malditas jumped from 69 to 67 in the latest ranking released by the world’s football governing body, making them the 16th best team in Asia.

This has been the Filipinas’ best position in the FIFA rankings, which they first notched last 29 July.

Their current standing was largely due to the ladies’ recent semifinals finish, after a nil-nil deadlock against Myanmar and a demolishing 5-0 victory over Malaysia in the preliminaries of the biennial meet held in the country.

Meanwhile, SEA Games defending gold medalists Vietnam rose to 32nd position and followed by biennial meet runners-up, Thailand, who also improved to 38th spot.

Malditas’ semis arch-rivals Myanmar, who defeated the nationals via 2-1 in the bronze medal game, went one place up at No. 44.

The United States remained the No. 1 women’s football team in the world followed by Germany, Netherlands, France and Sweden.

Austria is the best squad in the Asian Football Confederation group and ranked No. 7 in the world followed by Japan (No. 10 in the world), North Korea (No. 11), China (No. 15) and South Korea (No. 20).