Posted by By Patrick Omorodion on
Despite crashing out of the 2006 World Cup race courtesy of rookies Angola, Nigeria still moved six steps to occupy the 23rd position on the current FIFA monthly ranking released yesterday with the Zurich-based world body rating Ghana, Togo and Tunisia as the most successful teams this year.
Despite crashing out of the 2006 World Cup race courtesy of rookies Angola, Nigeria still moved six steps to occupy the 23rd position on the current FIFA monthly ranking released yesterday with the Zurich-based world body rating Ghana, Togo and Tunisia as the most successful teams this year.
According to FIFA, while Uruguay, Ghana and Wales are the biggest movers on its ranking list this month, the three African teams, which incidentally booked their place for the 2006 World Cup, Ghana and Togo for the first time, are potential winners of the Best Mover of the year title.
Nigeria which alongside Cameroon and Egypt got seeded by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for next year's Nations Cup in Tunisia gained from the qualifiers, moving up six steps to occupy joint 23 with Cameroon, Poland and Colombia, making no African country in the top 20 positions in the world.
With Cameroon and Nigeria occupying joint fisrt in Africa, Tunisia which dropped four steps this month on the FIFA ranking maintains the third position in Africa with Egypt, Senegal, Morocco following in that order to remain among the top 40 teams in the world.
History makers,Togo and Ghana, for the first time, have shot into Africa's top 10 bracket to the ninth and 10th positions, pushing out Zimbabwe from the elite class but remain behind South Africa and another World Cup debutant Cote D'Ivoire who are seventh and eight in Africa.
Of the 27 World Cup teams decided so far, Ghana (51) and Angola (60) are the only qualifiers not in the top 50, according to FIFA. Of the 27 qualifiers that have emerged, 14 are among the top 20 in the world (no African team in this group) while 11 rank between 21 and 50 (including Togo). World champion, Brazil and The Netherlands remain supreme as number one and two respectively while Czech Republic moved one step up to swap positions with Argentina now on fourth position. France who whipped Cyprus to pick a World Cup ticket last week occupy the 5th position as England, another qualfier breaking into the top 10 on position nine