Worst In The World: FIFA Rankings July 2014: Turks & Caicos Climb

Friday 18 July 2014

FIFA Rankings July 2014: Turks & Caicos Climb

Following on from their victory over the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Cup last month the Turks & Caicos Islands have climbed well clear off the bottom of the FIFA world rankings with a frankly astonishing 66 point haul courtesy of that lone victory.

That sees them climb 26 places in the ranking tale to 181^st and ends a stay at the bottom of the rankings that had lasted since October 2012. Additionally, they are now ranked 29 out of the 35 CONCACAF nations thanks to their recent relative success.

What this all means is that we are of course down to just two teams at the foot of the world rankings; Bhutan and San Marino, who now due to being just two have officially slipped to equal 208^th rather than equal 207^th. Bhutan currently have no fixtures arranged so their situation appears bleak. As for perennial Euro-whipping boys San Marino, they begin their Euro 2016 campaign against Lithuania in Serravalle on 8^th September. They will also face England, Estonia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

Just above those two in the rankings is our next most likely worst in the world team, Anguilla. Their last non-defeat was just over three years ago; a 0-0 friendly draw with the US Virgin Islands. Should they fail to record a win or draw by next June that will disappear from the ranking points calculations and they would sole their sole ranking point. They do however have their own Caribbean Cup qualifiers in September against Antigua & Barbuda, St Vincent & the Grenadines and the Dominican Republic in which to try and stave off the sorry slide.

July 2014 Rankings (bottom):

=200. Cambodia 13

=200. British Virgin Islands 13

202. Eritrea 11

203. Somalia 8

204. Macau 7

205. Djibouti 6

206. Cook Islands 5

207. Anguilla 1

=208. Bhutan 0

=208. San Marino 0

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What's This All About?

It’s all too easy to focus on the successful teams in international football, Spain, Brazil, Germany etc. We all know what’s going on with them, usually winning, and can easily follow their crowning glories on the international stage. But what about life at the other end of the scale?

FIFA’s world rankings allow us to easily see who is officially the worst national football team in the world, and this site simply follows that team (or teams) until they manage to drag themselves kicking and screaming from the foot of the world rankings to be replaced by someone even worse. And then we follow them instead.

In the past the FIFA rankings made it clear who was the very worst of all, as the complex ranking formula rarely caused a tie for last place. Since 2006 the formula has been rather simplified, I won’t go into detail but many factors were removed to make things easier to understand. The result though is that down at the bottom of the rankings we often now have a cluster of ineptitude (or should it be a splat of ineptitude?) with several nations judged to equally as useless as each other for the simple reason that they lose all their games. In the past they’d have received some credit for a narrow defeat against a top side, but no more. To get off the bottom they are going to have to win or draw a match, something that often proves beyond most of them.

We’re here to highlight their struggles against hopelessness, and bring the occasional heart warming story of marginal success.