One of Africa World Cup representatives, Cameroun have improved on their Coca Cola FIFA ranking to become the leading African team on the ranking. Also, the leadership of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking has changed hands following the completion of the preliminary competition for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™.
Cameroon at the 11th position are among this month’s winners which also include, Greece (12th, up 4) and Uruguay (19th, up 6), the last two also thanks to a massive gain in points from the play-off matches. The African leaders improve by three positions upward. Of the top 20, only Croatia (10th, down 2) and Russia (13th, down 1) will not be taking part in the finals in South Africa and only four of the qualified teams do not feature among the top 50 (Korea Republic, New Zealand, Korea DPR and South Africa).
European champions Spain has taken over overtaking Brazil, who had been at the top since July. Portugal (5th, up 5) and France (7th, up 2) have benefited greatly from the results of the World Cup play-off matches, which are valuable in terms of points, while the teams that qualified in October, Argentina (8th, down 2) and England (9th, down 2), have lost ground.
Togo (70th, up 10), Mozambique (72nd, up 12), Zimbabwe (108th, up 23), Swaziland (138th, up 10) and Comoros (178th, up 21) can also be proud of their recent haul of points. Côte d’Ivoire (16th, up 3), Algeria (28th, up 1), Latvia (45th, up 2), Burkina Faso (49th, up 6), Benin (59th, up 8), Montenegro (73rd, up 2) have also reached their highest ever position since the world ranking was introduced in 1993.
A total of 104 ‘A’ international matches have been played since the October edition of the ranking, taking the number of matches evaluated in the ranking this year to 805. In all, 22 matches, including 12 play-off matches, were held to bring down the curtain on the preliminary competition for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ and 13 qualifiers for the next AFC Asian Cup.