If cell A1 contains the word "dog" and A2 contains the word "zebra" and the rest of the column is empty, you would expect the suggested formula to return 2. To the contrary, it returns 1.

In the Arial font, it appears that CHAR(158) sorts last. This is a lowercase z with a circumflex accent above it. The CHAR(158) is a lower case y with umlaut above it.

I listed the ASCII characters 1 to 255 in column A and their ASCII code in column B. I then sorted columns A and B by column A in ascending alphabetical order. The results of the MATCH formulas were:
=MATCH(REPT(CHAR(255),10),$A:$A,1) returns 251 (the correct position of CHAR(255) in column A after sorting
=MATCH(REPT("y",10),$A:$A,1) also returns 251
=MATCH(REPT(CHAR(158),10),$A:$A,1) returns 255
=MATCH(REPT("z",10),$A:$A,1) also returns 255


I cannot test non-Latin fonts, being unable to read those languages. Do the results differ there?