INDIA down to 158th in World Rankings!

The world football governing body FIFA released the latest FIFA World Rankings earlier today in which India dropped four places to be now joint 158th amongst the 208 ranked nations and territories, while within Asia India dropped to 28th amongst 46 nations in the rankings.

Amongst the South Asian nations India are second only to Nepal (153th) ahead of Bangladesh (164th), Maldives (174th), Afghanistan (178th), Pakistan (181st), Sri Lanka (186nd) and Bhutan (201st).

India is joint 158th along with Hongkong behind Fiji and ahead of Lesotho and Palestine with 132 points, nine less then last month. The points were lost through the change of points on the year to year calculations. The points are calculated over a four year period.

India had played two friendlies in this time period, but lost both to Oman (1-5) and Azerbaijan (0-3) with the next assignment being the 2012 AFC Challenge Cup in Nepal which starts tomorrow. India's opponents in Group B of the 2012 AFC Challenge Cup are North Korea (111th), Tajikistan (145th) and the Philippines (156th). There India could gain some valuable points to move-up the FIFA World Rankings.

Meanwhile there has been some change amongst the top five of the FIFA World Rankings. World champions Spain (1,561 points) stay at the top with the Netherlands (1,379) back in second ahead of Germany (1,332), Uruguay (1,289) and Brazil (1,157) who have moved-up two places into fifth again.