England have dropped a whopping six places in the latest FIFA World Rankings. Spain are the new leaders unsurprisingly but Argentina have in the span of one month gone from the best to sixth.

Spain
Italy
Germany
Brazil
Netherlands
Argentina
Croatia
Czech Republic
Portugal
France

Russia
Romania
Cameroon
Turkey
England
Scotland
Bulgaria
Greece
Mexico
Ghana

That is your top 20 - doesn't make good viewing does it?

No surprise that Spain have taken that big step forward. Did Argentina lose a couple of World Cup Qualifiers or something?

I don't see how England's inactivity could cost them six spots though?

England lost all those spots because it is done on a four year rotation and we just lost our Euro 04 Q/Fs appearance from the records. You should see Greece's fall, they went down from 8th to 18th to one foul swoop!

Russia went up 13 places though - so these major tournaments can really yo-yo rankings!

It also looks like the Euros have taken a huge baring on these rankings which explains why the South American teams have fallen. This really is a bit of a crappy system to seed teams, why don't they just do it every two years or have an ongoing one like they seem to have in cricket.

They do have an ongoing system with runs on a four year rolling schedule, hence why the Euro 2004 have just disappeared.

Well id like to add that im proud of Scotland, number 16 in the world, no matter how the ranking system works is a great achievement for Scotland.

We were even up at 13th in October. It might not mean much to alot of people but does to me, because i remember March 2005 Scotlands Ranking was 88th in the World. Not only was it that low, but our performances deserved that type of ranking.

Happier Days