The Malawi national women’s football team has dropped 19 places on Fifa Women’s Football World rankings.
The development comes four months after the Scorchers moved 15 places up the ranking.
The revised rankings, released on Friday on the world football governing body’s website www.fifa.com, indicates that the Scorchers are now 149th in the world from 130.
In Africa, they are 24th while in the Cosafa bloc they are sixth.
Nigeria is the number one team on the continent but 38th in the world, followed by Cameroon (52) and South Africa (55).
Scorchers coach McNelbert Kazuwa said the plunge is painful and there is a need to fight for a better place.
“This is a big drop and as a team, it is a very bad experience. Something needs to be done urgently to get back on track,” he said.
Kazuwa concurred with National Women Football Association (NWFA) chairperson Suzgo Ngwira that the drop is as a result of the national team’s inactivity due to Covid-19.
They said the solution is to play a number of international friendly matches ahead of forthcomingWomen’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Ngwira said: “We could not have made such a big drop had it not been for the long inactivity due to Covid-19. Despite that, the future still looks bright. We just need to play a number of friendly matches to get back on track.”
Scorchers last played in November 2020 when they competed at the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Women’s Championship in South Africa where they qualified for the semi-finals for the first time since 2011.
Malawi beat Lesotho 9-0 and Zambia 1-0 in the group stages before losing 6-2 to South Africa in the Semi-final.
