The month of November turned out to be quite a good one for Indian football, as the national team climbed six places on the FIFA rankings, to the 166th spot.
India were able to do this by virtue of a thundering strike by forward Robin Singh that gave the Blue Tigers a 1-0 victory over a higher-ranked Guam side in the 2018 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers.
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Although the win might not have had much bearing on India’s chances to qualify, as they are still bottom of their group, they did manage to climb the FIFA rankings after slumping to No. 172, their worst ranking so far, in November.
The win against Guam earned India 318.75 points, which was enough to push them up six places.
Iran tops Asian charts
While these ranking points leaves India on the 31st spot with regard to Asian rankings, Iran yet again leads the continental charts in the year-end rankings. They are followed by two other Asian giants — South Korea and Japan.
Unfortunately for these giants however, they dropped a few spots in their overall rankings, but Iran (dropped two spots), South Korea (three), and Japan (three) managed to retain the top-three order among the Asian teams.
Belgium top of the world
In the grand scheme of things though, the proverbial champagne would be cracked by the Belgians, who managed to retain their top-spot to end the year as the best national team in the world. This is reason enough for celebration for the European nation as they have finished the year-end rankings in the top-spot for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, Argentina and Spain leapfrogged Germany to the second and the third spot on the rankings respectively. While Argentina just jumped one spot though, Spain heaved themselves from the sixth to the third spot.