Caf announces new club ranking formula

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) says, effective 2012, a new point system will be used to rank clubs on the continent as the sport body rejects an African clubs ranking published this week in the media.

Reports in the media had claimed that, clubs have been ranked based on CAF interclubs competitions and the FIFA Club World Cup with Ghana's Asante Kotoko positioned third on 43 points while Hearts of Oak were placed eighth on 32 points.

But the sport body has distanced itself from such publication.

"CAF reminds its readers that every year a ranking of CAF Member Associations is established based on performance of their respective clubs in both the Orange Champions League and the Orange Confederation Cup, to determine the top 12 countries ranked over a period of 5 years, allowing them to engage 2 clubs in each CAF Club Competition," the continent's sport body said in a statement yesterday.

"For sake of good order, we hereby repeat below about the procedure that will be implemented for the engagement of clubs for the year 2012:

"CAF will calculate points based on the clubs' performances over the last 5 years in the Orange Champions League and Orange Confederation Cup, not considering the running year."

It said, next year's procedure will be five points for the winner of the CAF Champions League, four points for runner up, three points for semi finalists, two points for third clubs of the group stages and one point for fourth placed clubs in the group stage.

The statement added that the winner of the CAF Confederation Cup will get four points, three-points for runner up, two-points for second club in the groups and 1onepoint for the third and fourth clubs in each group.

It also explained that the points shall be multiplied by the co-efficient according to the year as follows; 2010 - five, 2009 – four, 2008 – three, 2007 – two and 2006 – one.