Black Stars drop out of top 50 nations

The Black Stars of Ghana have dropped out of the top 50 countries in the FIFA World Rankings to 52nd place in the list released for the month of September on Thursday.

However, the Stars improved from ninth place in the August ranking to become the eight best team on the African continent for September.

The senior national team were ranked the 50th best team in the world in the August rankings and it appears a 1-1 draw at home to Congo Brazzaville in the FIFA World Cup qualifiers affected their slump on the overall rankings. They also defeated the Congolese 5-1 away in the reverse fixture.

Egypt retained their place as Africa’s highest ranked team in the world despite slipping five places to 30th place in the overall ranking.

Germany returned to the summit of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, continuing this year’s ongoing tug-of-war with Brazil for top spot.

The reigning world champions edged ahead of A Seleção following two impressive FIFA World Cup™ qualifying victories over Czech Republic and Norway, and head a table much changed after the recent Russia 2018 preliminaries.

Belgium, for example, have climbed four places to enter the top five on the back of qualifying for next year’s finals. Portugal, for their part, are up three to third and, further down, no fewer than 23 teams jumped ten places or more.

Among the most notable climbers are the Cape Verde Islands (67, up 47), Luxembourg (101, up 35), Bolivia (46, up 22) and Denmark (26, up 20), this on the back of stunning results in qualifying against South Africa, France, Chile and Poland respectively.

Luxembourg are also one of four teams to have reached an all-time high position in the latest Ranking, along with Peru (12, up 3), Northern Ireland (20, up 3) and Syria (75, up 5).

The Bolivians, meanwhile, number among five new entries to the top 50, where they are joined by Montenegro (37, up 15), Bulgaria (38, up 14), Scotland (43, up 15) and Haiti (48, up 7).

The next FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking will be published on 16 October 2017.

Source: Graphic