JAKARTA - Brazil confirmed their position at the top of FIFA rankings to the 2022 Qatar World Cup which will take place in mid-November.
This cannot be separated from the positive results recorded by Brazil in the last two friendly matches in France last September, which is the last international official match window ahead of the 2022 World Cup, according to a FIFA press release received in Jakarta, Thursday.
Brazil recorded a 3-0 win over Ghana on September 23 and crushed Tunisia 5-1 four days later in order to gain 3.74 additional points in FIFA rankings.
Quoted from Antara, Brazil now collects a total of 1841.3 points and widens the advantage over Belgium which is in second place with 1816.71 points. This can certainly be additional motivation for the Selecao in their pursuit of the sixth World Cup trophy.
In the window of the international match in September, Belgium experienced a 5.21 point reduction due to one defeat from two matches held at UEFA Nations League Division A Group 4, which was with a score of 0-1 when they visited the Netherlands on September 26.
Meanwhile, in third place is Argentina, which now collects a total of 1773.88 points after adding 3.23 points thanks to two identical 3-0 wins over Honduras and Jamaica in the September international match window.
The trend of point reduction is not only experienced by Belgium, because in the top five FIFA rankings, the same thing was felt by France and England.
France has reduced 5.07 points and now has 1759.78 points in fourth place after suffering one loss from two games in September.
Meanwhile, England found their points reduced by 8.99 to 1728.47 in fifth place, after losing 0-1 in Italy and only being able to draw 3-3 against Germany.
FIFA noted that there were no changes in the composition of the top 10 rankings ahead of the 2022 World Cup after at least 172 official international matches were played throughout the September window.
However, Italy jumped up to sixth place with a total of 1726.14 points after getting 12.28 additional points, swapping places with Spain now having 1715.22 points.
Especially for the region under the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), Iran shifts Japan to become an Asian country with the highest FIFA ranking position in 20th. Indonesia also rose three strips to 152nd place after recording two consecutive wins over Guam in the September international match window.
Among the entire FIFA rankings, Azerbaijan received the most additional points, namely 19.55 points and together with Scotland became the country with the highest rankings, namely five places, each in 123 and 40.
Meanwhile, North Macedonia became the country with the most points reduced, namely 16.69 and Norway, which slipped six places to 42th, becoming the country with the worst-ranked decline.
FIFA actually gave a window to another international match starting on November 13 or seven days before the opening of the 2022 World Cup as a warm-up event.
However, the points of the match will be calculated after the 2022 World Cup is completed and released on December 22.
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