Algarve Cup 2012: Why the USA Are Not No. 1 in the World

Alas, what rot has come from the Algarve proving ground of women's football?

It is the United States of America, embarrassing themselves yet again.

I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the USA should be No. 1 in the world—they aren't.

And I'll tell you why.

They can't beat Japan.

Even worse—they can't score on Japan.

Case in point is their humiliating 1-0 defeat in the group stages of the Algarve Cup.

It's bad enough to not beat Nadeshiko Japan in the Women's World Cup final last year.

It's even worse to lose to them again, this time in regulation of the second-most important trophy in women's world football.

I find it baffling that Japan, the best team in the world at this point, are sitting at a paltry fourth in the current world rankings when they should really be first.

The States can drop 10 straight matches to Norio Sasaki's women and they can still be ranked first.

Incredible.

The USA should not be No. 1—plain and simple.

And as a follower of American soccer, I am fine with the USA dropping down in the rankings.

So my solution to this is that the current ranking system should be scrapped.

FIFA needs to rank national teams by either using a selection of former/current women's world football coaches, or a selection of accredited media to determine which country should go where.

For you North American followers of the game, you know what I am alluding to. That's right, it's a system similar to the NCAA college basketball and football polls.

This will assure that if Team A suffers a bad loss to Team B, who is ranked below Team A, then Team B will be ranked higher.

The ranking system that FIFA implements does not give an accurate rating of the teams. Letting former coaches or current media determine this would make for a fairer ranking of all countries playing the women's game.

And I will put a fair amount of dollars and euros on this bold prediction: the winner of Germany-Japan should be ranked No. 1 in the world.

I am actually putting a bold prediction on Japan winning this—with maybe Sweden sweetening the deal—so that any arguments for the USA remaining No. 1 come the next poll sinks faster than the Titanic.

After witnessing another embarrassing result against Japan in the 2012 Algarve Cup, the United States women's national team needs to be content with taking a back seat to the true No. 1—Japan or Germany—in the next FIFA/Coca-Cola world rankings.