Women’s World Cup winners Spain have secured the top spot in the FIFA World Ranking for the first time, becoming the third country in the year-end rankings.
In the last ranking, published in August immediately after the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Spain rose to second in the world behind only Sweden, the team they defeated in the semi-finals, by just over 17 points.
The two nations combined in the organisational stages of the UEFA Nations League, with Spain winning any of their games, home and away, to end up being the best in the organisation. Sweden, on the other hand, lost 3 of their six games, drew and lost 71 points.
Spain would have clinched top spot in August had they dropped 35 points in qualifying after losing 4-0 to Japan in the FIFA Women’s World Cup qualifiers.
Since the first publication of the FIFA Women’s World Ranking in July 2003, the list has been governed by two countries: the United States and Germany, which until August were the only ones occupying the most sensible place.
In the most recent ranking, the Swedes took the top position for the first time, despite the fact that they have not won a primary foreign festival since 1984. Meanwhile, the deposed world champions, the United States, fell to their lowest position to date: third place, with just 0. 63 ratings from Spain.
Although, like Spain, the United States has won five of their six matches played since then, their victories have been in home friendly matches against lower-ranked opposition. Nonetheless, they have risen back up to number two in the world despite a reduction in their ranking points total. Spain’s five wins have all been in competitive games against top twenty ranked nations, including two wins over the previous number one team.
Before August 2021, Spain had never even been in the top ten of the rankings, and never in the top five until they won the Women’s World Cup for the first time this summer. The rankings, which determine how nations are seeded in major tournaments, are based on more than a team’s performance at the World Cup.
All matches played since the first officially approved FIFA match between France and the Netherlands in April 1971 are taken into account, i. e. a database of around 3,000 matches. When calculating the points earned for a given match, FIFA takes into account the difference overall. rating between the two teams, the result of the adjustment, and the importance of the adjustment.
Elsewhere in the rankings, after not playing any foreign matches in four years since the start of the Covid pandemic, North Korea has returned to the top ten after winning ten of the twelve matches it has played since October. A record 192 countries figure in the most recent ranking.
Any national team that has played at least five games against another FIFA ranked nation is included in the list. Teams that have not played at least one match during the last 48 months are deemed inactive and therefore removed from the list.
In the twenty years of the rankings, the United States has been in the number one position for a staggering 5,715 days – over 15 years – including seven consecutive years between March 2007 and December 2014.
Germany, world champions in 2003 and 2007, were the first country to end a calendar year at the top of the rankings in December 2003. This year-end ranking remained at number one for the next four years.
Since then, the U. S. has been the highest-scoring country in 14 of the next 15 years, with the exception of 2014, when Germany returned to the most sensible spot. At the end of the 21st year of qualifying, Spain was only the third country to finish the year as the number one women’s national team in the world.