…as Argentina lead, France follows
Nigeria’s senior national football football team, the Super Eagles, have gone down five spots from 35th to 40th in the World Soccer Governing Body, FIFA’s latest ratings released Thursday.
Nigeria’s slide down the ladder can be directly linked to a recent loss at home by the Super Eagles to lowly Guinea Bissau in the first leg of the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, pundits say.
The Super Eagles who are three time African champions also slid one rung down the ladder in the Africa ratings.
This is Nigeria’s worst performance since June 2019 when the team ranked 45th in the world.
Guinea Bissau who sprang a surprise 1-0 win over Nigeria’s Eagles in a recent Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match, moved up five spots in the FIFA ratings from 118 t0 113 position, clearly on account of that spectacular performance.
In a similar vein, six years after last topping the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, Argentina (1st, plus 1) are once again at the summit of world football. Recent friendly wins against Panama (2-0) and Curaçao (7-0) helped the world champions dethrone Brazil (3rd, minus 2), who paid a high price for defeat in their friendly against Morocco (2-1) FIFA reports on its website.
Not only did A Seleçao surrender top spot, but they also saw France (2nd, plus 1) move ahead of them. Les Bleus’ ascent to second is down to back-to-back wins in UEFA EURO 2024 qualifying against the Netherlands (4-0) and Republic of Ireland (1-0).
Outside the leading trio, there were no other movers among the Top 10. Belgium (4th, -) remain just outside the podium places, closely followed by England (5th, -). In fact, the swapping of places by Senegal (18th, plus 1) and Denmark (19th, minus 1) were the only other notable changes in the Top 20.
Further down the Ranking, however, there has been no shortage of movement, with the strides made by Serbia (25th, plus 4), Algeria (34th, plus 6), Egypt (35th, plus 4), and Scotland (36th , plus 6) among the most significant. No less impressive is the progress of Romania (46th, plus 6) and Canada (47th, plus 6), who move into the Top 50 at the expense of Mali (53rd, minus 8) and Saudi Arabia (54th, minus 5).
However, the most improved side in this edition are Central African Republic (122nd, plus 10). By twice beating Madagascar, at the time ranked 30 places above them, Les Fauves du Bas-Oubangui rose 10 places in the global standings, outperforming other notable movers such as Namibia (106th, plus 7), Malaysia (138th, plus 7) and The Gambia (120th, plus 6) .
