Nigeria Crash To 57th Place On FIFA Ranking

•Pinnick, NFF chairman

•Pinnick, NFF boss

Taiwo Adelu

It was a free fall for Nigeria on the latest ranking for the month of July as released by the world’s football governing body, FIFA. The country’s senior national team, the Super Eagles, which were 43rd in June, dropped 14 places to number 57 in the latest ranking released early Thursday.

This ranking was not good for Nigeria who just sacked their coach, AFCON winning Stephen Keshi and on the verge of recruiting former captain, Sunday Oliseh to take over the Eagles any moment from now.

The story was also not to good on the continent of Africa as the Eagles who were 7th last month, have dropped to 10th in the latest ranking, overtaken by the likes of Congo (7th) and Cape Verde (8th) in Africa’s ranking.

•Pinnick, NFF boss
•Pinnick, NFF boss

Algeria are number one on the continent followed by Ivory Coast, Ghana, Tunisia, Senegal, Cameroon and Egypt in that order.

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Following the second place finish at the Copa America, Argentina have leapfrogged Germany in the ranking, with Belgium, Colombia and Holland completing the top five positions.

According to FIFA, 28 teams have managed to climb by more than ten positions, including Belize (118th, up 37), Copa América semi-finalists Paraguay (56th, up 29), the Faroe Islands (74th, up 28) and Venezuela (45th, up 27).

Other teams achieving their best-ever rankings this month alongside Wales, the Faroe Islands and Belize are Slovakia (15th, up 2), Austria (15th, up 5), Iceland (23rd, up 14), Albania (36th, up 15), the Philippines (124th, up 13) and Guam (154th, up 20).

“The volatility of the ranking this month is due in part to the many matches that have been played: with 26 Copa América matches, 99 qualifying matches for the World Cup or continental tournaments, and 88 friendlies, the number of matches taken into account have almost doubled the amount for the year so far (477 matches in total). The other reason is that the matches from last year’s World Cup have been devalued,” FIFA said on its website Thursday.

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