FIFA Ranking: Black Stars drop points

Ghana’s senior national team, the Black Stars have inched a spot down from 51st to 52nd place on the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking released for October after not featuring in any fixture during the period under review.

The Stars were unable to garner any points after their AFCON 2019 qualifying games against were cancelled by the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

Kwasi Appiah’s side is now the seventh highest ranked African country behind Tunisia(1st), Senegal (2nd), Nigeria (3rd), Congo DR (4th), Morocco (5th) and Cameroon (6th).

The drop marks the second consecutive dip for Ghana on the FIFA rankings after they plummeted six places in September after losing to Kenya.

World Rankings

Belgium is the highest ranked football team in the world, with a narrow margin over world champions France.

The top two remain out in front after a month in which each of them enjoyed a win and a draw, with Belgium and France beating Switzerland (8th, unchanged) and Germany (14th, down two) respectively in the UEFA Nations League and emerging with honours even from matches against the Netherlands (15th, up 2) and Iceland (36th, unchanged).

The Dutch rose on the back of a fine 3-0 Nations League win over their struggling German rivals, and other sides also profited from their success in the same competition. England (5th, up 1), for example, swapped places with Uruguay (6th, down 1) after winning 3-2 away to Spain (9th, unchanged), while Norway (48th, up 4) moved into the top 50 after back-to-back victories and Russia (41st, up 5) maintained recent momentum by staying top of Group 2.

Gibraltar (190th, up 8), though, were undoubtedly October’s biggest Nations League success story, and their first-ever competitive wins against Armenia (101, down 1) and Lichtenstein (182, down 4) is reflected in a record Ranking position – and this month’s biggest rise.

The Gibraltarians are one of just six teams to have ascended more than five places, and the only team in Europe to have done so. The others all hail from Africa, where Egypt (58, up 6), Madagascar (100, up 6), Namibia (109, up 7), Zimbabwe (110, up 7) and Burundi (142, up 6) made significant gains on the back of strong results in CAF Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.

The next FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking will be published on 29 November 2018.