Duro Ikhazuagbe
The Super Eagles dropped one spot from 50th to 51st on the December Ranking released by FIFA on Thursday.
Eagles ranked 9th in the continent is the least of the five countries representing Africa at the World Cup in Russia next year. Africa’s other representatives at Russia 2018 Senegal, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco are ranked 23rd, 27th, 31st and 40th respectively
Interestingly, Nigeria’s Group D World Cup opponents; Argentina, Croatia and Iceland also did not move too much in the current rankings
Argentina maintained her number four spot, Croatia moved up one spot to 17th while Iceland dropped to number 22 in the global ranking.
The performance of the home-based Eagles at next month’s CHAN in Morocco will go a long in determining the Eagles subsequent ranking as FIFA regard the competition as a full international.
Apart from Nigerian and Congo DR that dropped spots, the Top Ten of the African ranking appears stable with Senegal at the summit with Tunisia, Egypt, Congo DR, Morocco, B’Faso, Cameroon, Ghana and Algeria (10th) maintaining that order downward.
At the global level, German is the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking’s latest ‘Team of the Year’, having ended 2017 atop the global ladder.
The world champions, who qualified to defend their crown in Russia by winning all ten of their qualifiers and have been unbeaten in 15 matches in 2017, succeed Argentina and Belgium, who were ‘Team of the Year’ in 2016 and 2015 respectively.
Germany held on to top spot in a largely unchanged Ranking that reflects the fact that just 41 ‘A’ internationals have been played since the previous edition, and that few of those involved teams at the top end of the table.
Brazil is second with Portugal, Argentina, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Switzerland, France and Chile making up the Top Ten at the global level to end 2017.
The next FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking will be published on January 18, 2018.
