India retain 97th position in latest FIFA Team Rankings

What’s the story?

FIFA has published the latest FIFA Team rankings on 29th November 2018 and India retains the 97th spot. The Stephen Constantine side, however, lost 5 rating points owing to the recent performances in the International Friendlies.

The FIFA rankings were earlier published on 25th October 2018 and Indian national team had 1245 rating points then. The team was expected to lose rating points and rank owing to the loss against a lower ranked Jordan in the recently held International friendly match.

In case you didn’t know…

Indian national team had played 2 International friendlies in the relevant period of the FIFA rankings. The first friendly played against China saw India putting up a spirited performance to hold back China to earn a 0-0 draw. The second friendly played against Jordan was a typical example of mismanagement by the Indian officials which saw the team getting stuck, rumors of the match getting canceled and then the final confirmation of the play. India had to play the match with a depleted side and lost against a lower ranked Jordan which downgraded the rating score of India.

Heart of the matter

Though Indian retained the 97th spot in the FIFA team rankings, it is to be understood that India lost 5 rating points. If India had retained their previous rating score of 1245, it would have seen India jumping from 97th to 96th in the FIFA team rankings.

We had previously predicted that India would lose 5 rating points.

The fact that India retained the 97th spot as against the expected 98th was largely due to the heavy fall in rankings that the Faroe Islands had from 95th to 98th losing 14 rating points in the process.

What’s next?

The Upcoming FIFA rankings will be released on 20th December 2018. But since India is expected to play the next friendly against Oman only on 27th December 2018, there would not be much difference to the rating of 1240. But the rankings may vary based on the performances of the other teams around India.