NEW CALEDONIA AMONG TOP MOVERS IN LATEST FIFA RANKINGS

New Caledonia are one of the world’s biggest movers according to FIFA’s latest world football rankings released yesterday.

The last twelve months have seen over 900 international football fixtures played around the world and New Caledonia have made the third largest leap in points out of all the 201
teams listed in the world rankings.

New Caledonia’s haul of 220 points has seen them jump from 176th spot to 118th, and improvement of 58 places. Their impressive string of results has seen them jump past Tahiti,
Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Fiji in the OFC rankings and sit in 2nd place behind New Zealand (95th).

In the last year New Caledonia has beaten Fiji, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu with the majority of results coming in FIFA world cup qualifiers.

New Zealand is the only country in OFC to cut the top 100 teams in the world, with the other ten nations falling between 118th (New Caledonia) and 201st (American Samoa). New Zealand
were ranked 131 at this time last year and show an improvement of 36 places on the back of an impressive 2-2 draw with Wales and good World cup qualifying form.

The leadership of the world rankings changed six times in the last year with Argentina ending the year in pole position, thus winning the title of ‘Team of the Year’.

In total, 901 international matches were played and taken into account in calculating the ranking. Around another two dozen matches are due to be played before the year is out, the
majority in the CECAFA Cup in east Africa. Those fixtures will bring the total for 2007 to about 930, the fourth-highest number of matches in history and the highest ever for a year following a
World Cup.

The next FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking will be published on 16 January 2008.

FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings

OCEANIA FOOTBALL CONFEDERATION

WORLD RANKINGS