Netherlands End Spain's FIFA Reign

There has been a change in the leadership of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, with the Netherlands ending Spain’s reign of more than a year at the summit to claim top spot for the first time ever.

The Oranje thus profited from Spain’s defeat by Italy – in a friendly that cost the world and European champions valuable points – to become only the seventh team (after Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) to sit atop the global ladder.

There has also been a dramatic change in South America, with fifth-placed Uruguay becoming the top-ranked South American team following Brazil’s (6th, down 2) loss to Germany (3rd, unchanged). England also reaped the rewards of A Seleção’s defeat to move up two places to fourth.

Also inside the top 50, Russia (13th, up 5), Nigeria (38th, up 5) and Algeria (46th, up 6) are the biggest gainers. Like the Dutch, Mongolia (160th, up 3) have achieved their highest position since the introduction of the FIFA Coca-Cola World Ranking.

Seventy-six 'A' matches have been held in the past few weeks, 60 of which were friendlies. Fifteen games were Asian Zone qualifiers for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil™, and one was a UEFA EURO 2012 preliminary.

For this edition of the world ranking, the confederation weighting for the AFC has been increased from 0.85 to 0.86 backdated to August 2010, after a review of the confederation weighting calculation found that 0.86 is the correct figure. This alteration has led to only minimal changes for a few teams, and would have had no impact whatsoever on the seedings for the Preliminary Draw for Brazil 2014 on 30 July.