Buzzin Football Blog

England Move Up To Tenth In FIFA Rankings

John Williams - Wednesday 12.11.08, 15:17pm

The latest FIFA International football standings announced today, see the England football team move four places up the league to share tenth position with Portugal and passing France on the way, who drop down one place to twelfth in this months figures.

This will be seen as a welcome boost for England manager Fabio Capello as he endeavours to turn the English game around and get us back on course for World Cup 2010 qualification. England along with Spain and Holland are the only three European teams to win all of their qualifying games so far, having earned favourable results against Belaraus and Kazakhstan in last months World Cup games.

Euro 2008 champions Spain remain firmly at number one in the world rankings, maintaining a perfect record in their qualifying games, most recently with well earned wins against Belgium and Estonia in the October matches. The Spanish team have now cemented their place in pole position since being placed at the top after the fabulous football of the Euro’s in June.

Former world number one team and everyone’s favourites Brazil find themselves languishing in fifth place, moving down from fourth on the back of a miserable display in the goalless draw with Columbia in October. Brazil are also the highest placed non European team in the list, one place ahead of Argentina who are also struggling to find consistency despite having some of the most exciting players in world football to select from.

It will be interesting to see if Argentina’s newly appointed coach Maradona will stay around long enough to have an influence on what is, in my opinion the most talented group of individuals currently in world football.

The FIFA rankings for November 2008 are:

1. Spain

2. Germany

3. Italy

4. Holland (Netherlands)

5. Brazil

6. Argentina

7. Croatia

8. Russia

9. Czech Republic

10. England

10. Portugal