Fifa's world ranking!

Ethiopia got up to 86th in the world just last month but slid back to 97th this month. In africa we were ranked 19th and now 23rd behind the likes of cape verde, malawi and gabon. To my surprise we are ranked above countries like uganda, kenya and mozambique who beat us convincingly at different times. I don't know what formula fifa uses to rank national teams but i know that we are not any better than uganda and kenya. We played far less internationals these days because we are knocked out on early stages. At one point we even struggled mightily to qualify for qualification group until caf abondoned this system.

Our footballers are now being paid more than a college graduates. But the quality of our local league is still at or below the level 10 or 20 years ago. Like wise the players coming out of this league are not much different from the time players played for almost free.

Moving up on fifa's ranking table doesn't show any inprovement in our football because we didn't get any better result now than when we were ranked 136 some years back. secondly, the system might rank us higher even if we don't play a game during particular time as teams ranked above us loose some games and move down. So this team ranking sytem is not indicative of the local football development at all. It doesn't matter for ethiopia wether we are ranked 60th or 160th.....the result is the same.

Our man in S.A!

Fikru Tefera scored a goal helping his team to win the first match of the season in south african league. His goal came on the fourth minut of the first half and the team eventualy won silver stars 2-0.His team, orlando pirates is strugling in the league this season despite reaching the semi final of the african champions league. Before his move to south africa, fikru has been playing for saint george until 2005/06.

http://www.supersoccer.co.za/default.asp?id=194569&des=article&scat=supersoccer/sasoccer

Ailing-Football Nation!

The recent results of the senior and junior national team of ethiopia shows that we got a long and rocky way ahead of us in building a decent team that can compete in continetal level.Ethiopia lost by a goal to a relatively new team in africa, Namibia, in cup of nation qualifying match.

The younger counterpart of the team lost to burkinafaso by the aggregate score of 3 to 2.In club levels none of our clubs ever got closer to quarter final the last 13 years in any competition.

These are just the most recent examples of our teams failers.The only silverware we managed to get since the 3rd african cup of nation is three cecafa cups. Even by this weak competion standard, ethiopias result is far from being impressive. Kenya, uganda and tanzania dominated it for long time.

Given the economic and political problem in our country, how can we raise the standard of our national team? What makes the nations like Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Tunisia etc do good in the continent's competetion? what is their advantage over us? In general, What is the problem with our football?

Please, please feel free to write me your idea and suggestions. It might help in some way to improve our football.