By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA-
FOOTBALL Association of Zambia (FAZ) president, Kalusha Bwalya has dismissed the monthly FIFA/Coca-Cola rankings, describing them as a joke and a complete waste of time.
Expressing his rage on his social twitter account yesterday soon after the latest FIFA rankings were released from Zurich, Switzerland, Kalusha said he stopped following the FIFA ratings a long time ago because they do not make sense.
British Broadcasting Corporation Sports journalist Farayi Mungazi joined in on the twitter conversation with Kalusha and called for the abolishing of the rankings.
Kalusha highlighted the fact that the Confederation of African Football (CAF) ranks Zambia fourth in Africa and used that rating when making draws for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations, only for FIFA to place the Chipolopolo 17th in Africa.
FIFA yesterday released their monthly global rankings that saw Zambia give away five places from number 74 in the world in April to 79th this month and one place lower in Africa from 16th.
”It’s a joke, CAF says Chipolopolo is ranked fourth for the 2015 Africa Cup (AFCON) draws. Then someone comes and says, ‘You are number 14 in Africa!’ Based on what?
“I stopped following the FIFA ranking long time ago. Zambia is ranked fourth in Africa based on results since 2010. Zambia is also ranked fourth in Africa because that’s where we compete in. Let’s keep it real. No fantasy,” he stated.
Kalusha also advocated for CAF to come up with its own rankings that would rate African teams properly and based on competitions that they genuinely competed in.
He said it was good to have some high profile friendlies like Brazil versus Zambia and that it meant a lot to the Zambians but could not be compared to an AFCON or World Cup qualifier.
The 1988 African Footballer of the Year justified Zambia’s high ranking by CAF, saying it was based on results since 2010 and wondered how the Chipolopolo could end up in 17th according to FIFA.
“Look at our results from 2010 until today! Only (three) 3 African teams beat us. That is the way it should be,”  Kalusha said.
The CAF rankings put Nigeria on top and followed by Ghana and the Ivory Coast and Zambia in fourth with Burkina Faso completing the top five.
Mali, Tunisia, Algeria, Angola, and the Cape Verde make the top 10.
The FIFA top 10 In Africa as released yesterday has Ivory Coast sitting pretty at the helm and followed by Egypt and then Algeria with Ghana in fourth and Cape Verde making the top five.
Other countries in Africa’s top 10 are Nigeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, Guinea and Mali.
Kalusha added that he wanted to see a situation where CAF each month released an African ranking table based on competitions that were organised by the continental body and put sanity to the ratings.