Dear England, More Bad News, Love FIFA

The new FIFA World Rankings were announced today, and it’s more bad news for England as their Euro 2008 disaster has seen them drop a place to 12th (leapfrogged by Greece.) For those who think FIFA world ranking are completely meaningless, think again. Those numbers will have a very real effect on Sunday, when the World Cup 2010 qualification groups are drawn. 12th in the world means England are 10th in European teams, which means they’ll miss out on being one of the nine top seeds. As second tier seeds they’ll be drawn alongside one of the big nations, which means World Cup qualification will be theoretically more difficult than Euro 2008 qualification. And we all know how that went.

Argentina, Brazil and Italy remain first, second and third respectively. Spain (4th) and the Czech Republic (6th) have moved up a couple of places, France (7th) and the Netherlands (9th) down a couple after so-so but ultimately successful Euro 2008 campaigns. Bulgaria (18th) and Israel (26th) have all made decent sized leaps up the table, while Greece’s (11th) jump means they will be one of the top seeds when the World Cup qualifying groups are drawn.

Biggest movers are New Zealand (95th) who climbed 33 places. The All Whites can expect to dominate Oceanic World Cup qualifying now Australia have moved house to Asia. Bottom nation is São Tomé and Príncipe, the island nation in the Gulf of Guinea being ranked 208th in the world. Top 50 ranked teams below…

1 Argentina
2 Brazil
3 Italy
4 Spain
5 Germany
6 Czech Republic
7 France
8 Portugal
9 Netherlands
10 Croatia
11 Greece
12 England
13 Romania
14 Scotland
15 Mexico
16 Turkey
17 Colombia
18 Bulgaria
19 USA
20 Nigeria
21 Paraguay
22 Russia
23 Poland
24 Sweden
24 Cameroon
26 Israel
27 Uruguay
28 Norway
29 Ukraine
30 Serbia
31 Denmark
32 Northern Ireland
33 Japan
33 Guinea
35 Republic of Ireland
36 Finland
37 Côte d’Ivoire
38 Senegal
39 Morocco
40 Iran
41 Egypt
42 Korea Republic
43 Ghana
44 Switzerland
45 Chile
46 Mali
47 Tunisia
48 Australia
49 Belgium
50 Slovakia

The full rankings can be seen here.