•Eagles flop in FIFA ranking

By Ben Efe
After a disappointing outing at the recently-concluded World Cup, Nigeria slumped six places down the ladder in the latest FIFA World Rankings, released Wednesday.
The drop is a direct consequence of the Eagles poor showing at the South Africa 2010.

GOAL BOUND: Nigeria's Desire Oparanozie challenges for the ball against her England marker. Oparanozie scored Falconet's equaliser in their FIFA U-20 World Cup opener yesterday

The Eagles failed to live up to expectations as they crashed out in the first round losing two and drawing one game they should have won against South Korea.

Egypt remained the highest ranked African country perching at the ninth spot, while Ghana is second on continental plane, with its 24th position on the global rankings.

The Ghanaians leapt nine places from their previous 32nd spot. Cote’d Ivoire are ranked 26 having moved one step from their previous rankings, is third on the continent.

Nigeria moved down to the 30th spot from 26 in June.  Nigeria is fourth on the African ranking with Algeria and Gabon following in that order. Cameroon plummeted to their worst ever placing, having dropped 21 places down to the 40th position on the global rankings. Cameroon lost all their matches at the 2010 World Cup.

World Cup champions, Spain claimed the top position in the July FIFA World Rankings.
The Spaniards displaced  Brazil who were favourites to win the 2010 World Cup, but crashed out at the quarter-final to Holland. The Dutch who lost in the nail biting World Cup final to Spain, climbed to the second position while Brazil fell to the third spot.

Despite becoming the firsthost nation in history to fail to reach the second round of the World Cup finals, Bafana Bafana, were the biggest climbers on the Fifa  World  Rankings jumping 17 places to 66th on the global ranking.

Uruguay were the biggest climbers in the top 10, rising 10 places to sixth __ their highest ever ranking __ after their unexpected run to the semi_finals.

Fellow South Americans Paraguay climbed 15 places to 16th, while Japan’s success in reaching the last 16 took them up 13 places to 32nd.

New Zealand enjoyed the most significant rise, going up 24 places to 54th after finishing their World Cup campaign unbeaten in spite of the fact they were knocked out at the group stage.

England rose one place to seventh despite crashing out to Germany in the second round, but there was no such good fortune for fellow under_achievers Italy and France.

Defending champions Italy dropped six places to 11th after they were eliminated in the group phase, while France plunged 12 places to 21st following their disastrous campaign.