Stephen Keshi eyes FIFA top 10

Keshi

Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi has targeted a FIFA top-10 place and as such the country’s federation are not disturbed by the team’s crash in the latest rankings, officials said.

The latest FIFA rankings have seen Nigeria plunge 11 places to 56th in the world, the country’s worst rating since late 2000.

Nigeria are now eighth in Africa behind the likes of Mali, Gabon and Zambia.

Cote d’Ivoire despite losing the AFCON final to Zambia are the top African football nation.

However, general secretary of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Musa Amadu, has told MTNFootball.com that the federation are not shocked at the ranking and are more preoccupied about improving on their standing as promised by new Eagles coach Stephen Keshi.

“I know that coach Stephen Keshi in qualifying the country (for both the 2013 Nations Cup and 2014 World Cup) is also eyeing a top 10 spot in the world, but right now the ranking is not our primary concern," said Amadu.

"We are not surprised at the ranking. It was expected since we did not feature at the Nations Cup finals"

“We knew that we would drop in the ranking because we did not go to the African Cup of Nations. You can see that we were even placed ahead of some countries that were at the Nations Cup finals in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

“Having said that, the Nigeria Football Federation wishes to assure Nigerians that from now on, our country would only move upwards on the FIFA Ranking, and in leaps and bounds”.

He added: "But in any case the FIFA ranking is the least of our worries. We are focused at qualifying for AFCON 2013 and the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.” 

SOURCE: MTNFOOTBALL