NEW FIFA RANKINGS OUT:
Oh dear, NZ down ten places to 67 - but still, not far behind Scotland and Poland - would've been unthinkable in the 1980's when those sides were strong. Mighty Cape Verde Islands at 44, ahead of all three mentioned and ahead of Australia 53 !!!
http://www.fifa.com/worldranking/rankingtable/index.html
Panama 35 Honduras 40 Mexico 21 (only down 1)
France 25 Greece 12 Bosnia 18 Republic of Ireland 59 Sometimes just doesn't make much sense....
The result of two losses (UAE and NC) and playing bugger all games. In saying that Cape Verde might drop a bit now with their expulsion from the African Cup of Nations for fielding an ineligible player. Something Africa excels at!
Probably doesn't include the recent results v Saudi and UAE as the World Rankings are a bit slow to react - those results in fact wouldn't harm us as v Saudi counts as an away win and v UAE was on neutral territory, even if both are ranked lower. It's the lack of games between World Cup qualifiers in March and the present.
Cape Verde Islands were in fact extremely hard done by and will probably have a case for the International Court of Arbitration in Sport:
They have actually been expelled by FIFA from the upcoming African World Cup final qualification play-offs - and legally it's a mess.
The "ineligible player" they fielded in their recent win v Tunisia was in fact a player sent off v Equatorial Guinea in a qualifier earlier in the year which was annulled because Equatorial Guinea fielded an ineligible player. He's completely eligible to play for Cape Verde (a citizen born and bred) - just "ineligible" in FIFA's eyes for the Tunisia game because he was supposed to be suspended.
But the game he copped the suspension in was annulled and awarded as a 3-0 win to Cape Verde because Equatorial Guinea broke the rules by fielding a player not eligible to play for that country. Naturally Cape Verde believed suspensions incurred in that game were also null and void....I have a feeling they could win their case - they'll be moral victors anyway!
Cape Verde (pop 500,000) are the biggest giant-killers of the year in international football and reached the quarter-finals of the African Cup of Nations in South Africa in February (undefeated in group play) - they qualified for the finals by beating the Cameroons home and away.