India placed 22nd in new Asian football technical ranking

A new technical ranking system of the Asian Football Confederation has placed India in 22nd spot among the continent’s 46-member countries, the highest among South Asian nations.

The technical ranking system released by the AFC recently takes into account the performance of the national team and clubs (at AFC competitions) of a particular country in the last four years and points are given accordingly.

National team’s performance is based on <g data-gr-id="20">lastest</g> FIFA ranking points and this carries 30 per cent <g data-gr-id="24">weightage</g> in the calculation. The performance of the clubs of a particular country carries 70 per cent <g data-gr-id="26">weightage</g> and this is calculated based on the four latest Asian Champions League or AFC Cup seasons.

One AFC Cup point is equivalent to 1/3 of an AFC Champions League point. ACL is the top-tier football competition in <g data-gr-id="28">Asia,</g> while AFC Cup is the second tier league played among developing football of the continent like India. Two Indian clubs play in the AFC Cup every year. India, which lies at 27th spot among AFC countries in the latest FIFA rankings (at 155th), has?18.636 points (11.951 for performance by national team + 9.318 for performance by clubs) in its kitty in the latest technical rankings.

South Korea leads the technical rankings chart with 88.354 points (63.326+25.028), followed by Saudi Arabia (84.666), Iran (79.435), Japan (71.191), UAE (68.261), Australia (65.395), China (61.229), Qatar (56.280), Uzbekistan (52.334) and Kuwait (43.635) in top 10.