LEOPARD UNRANKED!

MBABANE – Despite reaching the group stage for the first time in the history of the club, Eswatini CAF envoys Royal Leopard are still not ranked.

While Leopard are not ranked, all their CAF Confederation Cup opponents are ranked. These are South Africa’s Orlando Pirates, JS Saoura of Algeria and Libya’s Al-Ittihad. The rankings are sourced from footballdatabase.com. The Soweto giants are ranked 22nd in Africa and 407 in the world. Algeria’s JS Saoura are ranked 24th and 413 in the world while Libya giants, Al-Ittihad are positioned 84 in Africa in 846 in the world. According to transfermarkt.com, Pirates are the most valued team and are worth about E343 million, while the Algerian-side are second most valuable side on Group B with an estimated value of E131 million. The Libyan-side are valued at about E6 million while the police ensemble are not valued on the website.

Assets

The value according to the team is the number of assets the team has and this include the clubhouse, cars, players, management and technical bench. The working personal are valued by a player or coach’s worth and how much they are earning at that particular time. The rankings are based on results in the league and CAF. The wins are then tallied to get the number of points a team has over a certain period of team. For Leopard to be ranked they will have to break even and possibly advance to the quarterfinal of the CAF Confederation Cup, it is then they would accumulate more points and enter the rankings chart. Royal Leopard coach Edwin Matsebula said ranking and market value did not count when it came to the field of play.
“While in some way, the ranking reflects the strength of a team, it may not necessarily mean they are better than the team that has not been ranked. In football anything is possible as long as you work hard and believe in yourself,” said Matsebula.

Goals

He then highlighted that despite JS Saoura being ranked higher than them, they were not a strong opponent. “Those two goals they scored were both penalties so they dived to get those goals. In fact JS Kabylie are stronger than JS Saoura,” he said. He said they were not going to consider the ranking when they faced Pirates on Sunday. He said they would approach the game with the respect it deserved and were hopeful for positive results. He also highlighted that it was their dream to advance to the next stage so that they were recognised and ranked in Africa.

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