Nigeria moves up on FIFA ranking

Nigeria has moved to 60th on the FIFA/Cocacola latest ranking, jumping four places from its last position in September.

Two successive victories for the Super Eagles, the latest being against Zambia, accounted for Nigeria’s leap in the ranking.

Ivory Coast are still the leaders in Africa. They moved three notches in the global ranking to 31st position.

They are followed by Senegal at 32nd position. Senegal moved seven places, the highest in the latest ranking for African countries, to become the second footballing force in Africa.

Algeria are 35th in the world and their position as Africa’s third power remain unchanged.

Tunisia, Ghana, Egypt and Congo DR follow.

All of them are ranked within world’s 50th best teams.

Congo which are eighth in Africa, are the 55th team in the world. Mali are 58th, Ghana 59th and Nigeria 60th and 11th in Africa, tied with Morocco.

Globally, according to FIFA.com, Germany and Brazil have moved into second and third respectively, giving hot chase to Argentina, the world number one.

A pair of wins for Germany, the current world champions, who saw off Czech Republic (40th, down 7) and Northern Ireland (36th, down 6) – just two of the 129 games played worldwide – means they have trimmed Argentina’s lead to just 156 points.

Belgium (4th, down 2) have fallen out of the top three for the first time since March 2015, with Colombia slipping to fifth (down 1), while defeated UEFA EURO 2016 finalists France (up 1) have leap-frogged European champions Portugal (8th, down 1) into seventh.

Spain return to the top ten, while fellow Europeans Poland (15th, up 2), Iceland (21st, up 6) and Kosovo (164th, up 4) have moved up to their highest-ever placings.

The same feat has also been achieved by Guinea-Bissau (69th, up 4), St Kitts and Nevis (73rd, up 4), Curaçao (77th, up 45), Kyrgyzstan (99th, up 9), Comoros (143rd, up 9) and Papua New Guinea (159th, up 3).

The biggest rise in terms of places and points this month has gone the way of Montenegro (56th, up 49), following wins over Kazakhstan (90th, down 7) and Denmark (50th, down 4).

There have also been impressive leaps from the likes of Azerbaijan (88th, up 45) and Faroe Islands (74th, up 37) – the latter equalling their highest-ever position.

There have been noteworthy two-digit climbs for Iran (27th, up 10) and Slovenia (52nd, up 15), while Israel (79th, up 19), Syria (96th, up 18) and Lithuania (98th, up 19) have made substantial moves around the top 100.

Cyprus (139th, down 52) suffer the heaviest drop in the ranking. Meanwhile there have been notable two-figure demotions for Russia (53rd, down 15) – taking them out of the top 50 – and the quintet of Finland (101st, down 17), Jordan (104th, down 18), Mauritania (115th, down 19), New Zealand (116th, down 28) and Latvia (116th, down 21) – seeing them move out of the top 100.