Nigeria drops to 47th in FIFA World ranking

Nigeria dropped six spots in the February rankings of the Federation of International Football Associations to 47th in the world.

This was in spite of the country’s third-place position at the just-concluded African Nations Championship held from Jan. 11 to Feb. 1 in South Africa.

In the rankings table on the world football governing body’s website on Thursday, Nigeria dropped from 41st in the world, with 616 points.

It had 710 points in the January rankings.

In the latest rankings, Nigeria dropped to the eighth position in Africa as against its January position of seventh in Africa and 41st in the world.

Among African nations, Nigeria is currently placed behind Cote d’Ivoire, Algeria, Cape Verde Island, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Cameroon.

Cote d’Ivoire, which leads the African countries with 841 points, is rated 23rd in the world, while Algeria, second in Africa with 819 points, is 26th in the world.

The rankings showed that Cape Verde Island garnered 799 points to be third in Africa, Ghana, 799 points; Egypt, 733 points; Tunisia, 656 points; and Cameroon, 626 points.

Libya, the 2014 CHAN champions, dropped by six spots to be 14th in Africa and 68th in the world.

Ghana, runners-up to Libya in CHAN, dropped by 13 spots to become 37th in the world and fourth in Africa.

However Zimbabwe, which was the fourth-placed team in CHAN, climbed by five spots in the ranking to become the 27th in Africa and 100th football nation in the world.

The global ranking also showed that Spain, Germany and Argentina retained first, second and third positions respectively.

Switzerland, now sixth, leapfrogged Uruguay which dropped to seventh position, while Italy is now in the eighth position.

Portugal, now fourth in the world, swapped spots with Colombia which took the fifth position.

Brazil went up by one spot to become the ninth football nation, while The Netherlands are 10th in the rankings.

According to FIFA, 42 international ‘A’ matches were taken into account for the February rankings, 40 of which were friendly matches.

NAN reports that the next FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings will be published on March 13, 2014.

Source - NAN