Ireland have dropped to 70th, their lowest ever ranking since the FIFA ranking system came in.
To put this in perspective, if the draw for the next World Cup qualifying groups were to be made today, we would be amongst the fourth seeds. Although rankings points are calculated over a four-year period, recent results are given greater emphasis.
Recent defeats at home to Serbia and Turkey (pic above) have contributed to our slide and thankfully, we didn’t lost against Italy (pic below) or we could have been in Equatorial Guinea territory. With further matches to come this summer against Portugal and Costa Rica, Martin O’Neill will want his men to get positive results in order to arrest the alarming slide into the nether regions of world football rankings.
On the plus side, Ronaldo won’t be playing for Portugal against us. They only have Pepe, Nani, Moutinho, Veloso and Carvalho amongst others. Should be a breeze.
Spain still lead the rankings followed by Germany and Brazil going up to third place ahead of the big kick-off next Thursday in Rio.
