Kenya targets top-20 football ranking by 2022

Kenya’s national football team

Nairobi, July 4 (IANS) Football Kenya Federation (FKF) is targeting to take the national team ‘Harambee Stars’ to a top-20 ranking in its 10-year strategic plan.

According to the programme, Kenya should be placed at 16th in the world by 2022. The east African nation is 123th in the world rankings currently as they crashed out of the 2014 World Cup qualification following a 0-1 home defeat to continental champions Nigeria and subsequent 2-2 draw to Malawi in June, reports Xinhua.

“We want to improve the standards of football in this country and one of the aims is to improve the ranking of our national team. We are in the process of setting out the structures and by 2022, we should be placed at No.16,” said FKF chief Sam Nyamweya on Thursday, adding that this will in turn open up more doors for Kenyan players to ply their trade in European leagues.

One of the measures needed is to ensure the country play more friendly matches on FIFA allotted days.

“We should be playing at least three friendly matches every year with teams that are placed higher than us in the rankings. This will help us not only to better ourselves but also improve our ranking,” said Nyamweya.

Kenya have played several high profile friendly matches with the most recent ones being their 3-0 win over Libya in Tunisia and a 1-2 home defeat to South Africa.

The country’s best FIFA ranking was in 2008 when the team rose to 68th in the world.