FIFA Ranking: Super Falcons climb to No. 1 in Africa

Photo credit: Goal

Nigeria's senior women national team climbed up a place to
37th in the latest Fifa world ranking.

The reigning African champions earlier dropped nine places
in September to 38th position due to their exit from the
preliminary rounds of the 2015 Fifa Women's World Cup in
Canada.

Falcons were unsuccessful in a second successive
attempt to secure an Olympics ticket and to make matters
worse failed to get a medal at the 2015 All African Games in
Brazzaville, Congo.
The Super Flacons gathered a total of 1602 points to remain
no. 1 in Africa ahead of Cameroon, Ghana, Equatorial
Guinea, South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt
and Senegal.

For Africa's women football event representatives at next
year's Rio 2016 Olympics, South Africa moved up five
places to 56th, while Zimbabwe are the highest climbers of
2015 moving up 9 places to 98th.

In the World ranking, the top ten places remained unchanged
with reigning world champions USA, Germany, France,
Japan, England, Korea DPR, Brazil, Sweden, Australia and
Norway from September edition.

But two countries improved on their best-ever ranking, are
Bosnia and Herzegovina (65th) and New Caledonia (92nd).

England gained three-point increase to hit new all-time top
score while New Zealand (1846), Austria (1730), Costa Rica
(1630), South Africa (1431), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1386)
and Guatemala (1322) recorded their best-ever scores.

Netherlands finished outside the top ten in 12th-place,
gaining 17 points after victories over Japan and France in
recent international friendlies.

Switzerland broke into the top 20 in the latest ranking after
classy 3-0 away win in Italy, while Spain moved up from
18th to 14th place.

Eight nations dropped out ranking due to prolonged
inactivity, reducing the number of ranked countries from 147
to 140, but Malawi was the only nation to re-enter the
ranking.

The next Fifa World Ranking will be published on 25 March
2016.