GreenScene » Ireland drop 8 places in FIFA World Rankings

Ireland drop 8 places in FIFA World Rankings

4 July 2012 1,334 views 8 Comments Written by Ronan

After a disappointing Euro 2012 tournament, the Republic of Ireland have dropped eight places in the latest FIFA World Rankings to 26th.

Having been ranked 18th in the world ahead of the European Championships, three losses have seen Giovanni Trapattoni’s side slide down the rankings table to 26th. Norway and Switzerland, teams who didn’t even appear at the finals, have moved above Ireland. Norway drew 1-1 with Croatia and lost 1-0 to England in friendlies, while the Swiss climbed thanks to a 5-3 win over Germany. Ireland now sit between Paraguay and Ecuador on 763 points.

Euro 2012 winners Spain keep hold of top spot, while Netherlands’ dismal performance sees them slip to eighth. England have climbed two places to fourth, with Germany, Uruguay, and Portugal completing the top 5. Euro 2012 runners-up Italy have moved up six places to sixth. Wales stayed firm at 38th, Scotland slipped eight places to 49th, while Northern Ireland moved up one place to 102nd.

Ireland’s World Cup 2014 qualifying Group C opponents Germany are 2nd, Sweden 17th, Austria 60th, Kazakhstan 147th, and the Faroe Islands are at 155th in July’s rankings. The next edition will be announced on August 8th ahead of Ireland’s friendly with Serbia.

8 Comments »

Mikeire said:

I don’t think we can take FIFA rankings very seriously but it seems it would have been better if we didn’t qualify for the euros… Maddening!

# 4 July 2012 at 12:01 pm

andy kelly said:

We should have dropped 800 places going off our utterly dismal displays.
Again there’s only one person to blame, Crappatoni.
Anyone want to help me start a campaign to get rid of our “Great leader”

An online petition would be a great place to start. The only direction we’re going with him at the helm is backwards (in more ways than one)

# 4 July 2012 at 7:58 pm

Mickey said:

So we qualify as one of Europe’s top 16 teams but because we play three times and lose three times, we drop 8 places? Not only that but drop 8 places behind teams who did not play any games during the tournament period. FIFA… are we that suprised really? Farcical

# 5 July 2012 at 9:47 am

Ronan (author) said:

Andy: it’s because of Trap that we were so high in the first place. Just sayin’…

# 5 July 2012 at 12:24 pm

Richie said:

I may be wrong but as far as I’m aware you don’t actually lose ranking points for losing games, you just don’t gain any (and an equivalent number of results from 4 years ago are wiped off your list so any points gained back then are lost). So we’re in the same position after 3 defeats at the Euros as we would be if we played no games during that time, I think.

Our ranking position is basically meaningless anyway until we reach another playoff or group stage draw, so 18 months down the line at least.

# 5 July 2012 at 1:40 pm

Ronan (author) said:

You’re not wrong Richie. We gained no points, but every team also saw their results from May/June 2008 taken off the rankings. So we lost the points we had for beating Colombia 1-0 and drawing 1-1 with Serbia back in 2008.

# 5 July 2012 at 3:47 pm

andy kelly said:

@ Ronan…This is a great site and you do a brilliant job running it but I totally disagree.
We qualified despite Trapp, he is a retrograde dinosaur with no ideas, no balls and offers us retarded tactics and way under par team selections.

# 5 July 2012 at 10:22 pm

Propagandhi said:

Crapattoni looks good in comparison with Steve Staunton and Brian Kerr (both of whom had next to no proper managerial experience) but he looks poor compared to Charlton and McCarthy.

We got to the Playoffs in ’10 and Euros in ’12 despite ourselves, really. We failed to beat a poor Italy team, a poor Bulgaria team, Russia and Slovakia in 8 matches. We got by because of results against crap teams. Crapattonis bread and butter, really.

We could be here all day talking about how inane Crapattoni’s decision-making is, so I’ll mix it up a bit.

Keith Fahey scores vital goal against Armenia and is promptly marginalised. Paul Green (literally) almost costs us the same game and is promoted to 1st choice.

Shane Long scores against Bosnia and is marginalised. Jon Walters contiues where he left off in England by running around a lot but snatching at chances, mistiming vital passes and being too short to hold up the ball/too technically poor to set up chances/too crap to score.

James McClean finishes the season with (almost) the best goals to game ratio at Sunderland but Simon Cox is preferred, despite being out of position and on the back of two awful seasons.

Germany are far better than Russia and ’09 Italy, Sweden are better than Bulgaria and Slovakia and Austria are arguably better than we are so we have a problem.

Houdini couldn’t make all the personnel/tactical changes in one game against Serbia that Crapattoni has to make to prepare us for this challenging new cycle.

He should have been implementing these changes when we had the chance, last summer.

But, no. We know no more than we have done for the last 4 years.

But we had a great sing song, went sightseeing in Poland and the craic was mighty so it’s all good.

Love him or loathe him, Roy Keane is right. The FAI need to change. The fans need to change. The players need to change.

Our “men-tal-i-ty” needs to change. Just getting there isn’t good enough.

# 6 July 2012 at 12:21 am