page_title: Northern Mariana Islands national football team
section_title: Elo rating
hierarchical_section_title: Northern Mariana Islands national football team / Rankings / Elo rating
caption_attribution_description: English: Graphical representation of the historic year-end Elo ratings for the Northern Mariana Islands national football team
context_page_description: The Northern Mariana Islands national football team represents the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in international men's football. The team is controlled by the governing body for football in the Northern Mariana Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands Football Association, which is a member of the East Asian Football Federation and an associate member of the Asian Football Confederation. The federation is not a member of the world governing body FIFA and so whilst the national team is eligible to enter AFC and EAFF-run competitions, they are currently ineligible for global competitions such as the FIFA World Cup and FIFA Confederations Cup. As such, they do not have an official FIFA ranking. However, the team have been consistently ranked as one of the worst teams in the world on the Elo ratings and are in fact, at July 2016 rated as the worst men's senior international team in the world in a ratings system that also includes a number of other non-FIFA teams.
context_section_description: The team has steadily fallen down the Elo ratings since their first official game against international opposition versus Guam in the 1998 Micronesian Games, from a starting point of 214 to their current position of 234. This is in part due to performance that has seen them gain only one win and one draw since their reemergence on the international scene in 2007 and part due to the fact that they have always been at or near the bottom of the rankings in a period where a number of new competing nations have emerged. Currently their ranking of 234 confirms their status as the world's worst senior international football team. They are ranked directly below their fellow non-FIFA teams of Kiribati, Tibet and Palau, though this is perhaps somewhat skewed by the fact that all three of these teams are essentially in hibernation having not competed internationally for a number of years. The nearest FIFA affiliated team to them is Bhutan, who are ranked 230th.
caption: Northern Mariana Islands Year End Elo Ratings 1998–2016.
exif: {"Image Artist": "Harry Shave", "Image ExifOffset": "2134", "Image XPAuthor": "Harry Shave", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:01:16 17:03:48", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:01:16 17:03:48", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "88", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "88", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}