Jordan ends year at 87th in FIFA rankings

AMMAN  — Jordan ended the year at 87th when the latest FIFA World Rankings were issued on Thursday.

The Kingdom dropped five spots this month, after they lost to Kyrgyzstan 1-0 in its return leg Group B qualifier for the 2018 World Cup doubling as part of the qualification for 2019 Asian Cup.

Belgium still leads the World top 10 ahead of Argentina, Spain, Germany, Chile, Brazil, Portugal, Columbia, England and Austria. 

Jordan dropped to 10th in Asia trailing Iran (45), South Korea (51), Japan (53), Australia (57), the UAE (65), Uzbekistan (74), Saudi Arabia (80), China (84) and Qatar (86). 

Jordan is now second in Group B after Australia took the lead as it beat Bangladesh 4-0. The Kingdom had scored two consecutive wins and beat Asian champs Australia 2-0 and Tajikistan 3-0 in the previous two qualifiers. In the first leg, Jordan was held to a disappointing 0-0 draw with Kyrgyzstan, beat Tajikistan 3-1, Bangladesh 4-0. Forty teams are playing home and away in a round-robin format in the current second qualifying round which runs until March 2016. 

Jordan went up 17 spots to 82nd last month, before playing its last qualifier, and after overcoming Malta 2-0 in a friendly.

The Kingdom had the most memorable World Cup qualifying journey in 2013 when it lost a possible chance to play at the World Cup for the first time and advanced to play then World’s 6th ranked Uruguay in an intercontinental qualifying tie for a place in the 2014 World Cup. It lost the home game 5-0 and held the former World Cup champs 0-0 in the away match. Jordan had never reached that far in World Cup qualifying since taking part in the qualifiers in 1985. Round 3 had been the furthest Jordan reached in the past seven times in the qualifiers.

In the Asian Cup, Jordan reached the championship three times since first taking part in qualifiers in 1972: the pinnacle was at the 13th Asian Cup, when it lost to Japan in the quarter-finals and jumped to the best ever FIFA rank of 37th in August 2004. In 2011 Jordan again reached the quarter-finals. 

Earlier in 2015, Jordan’s line-up was led by Briton Ray Wilkins under whom the team failed to advance past the group of the 16th Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup. Ahmad Abdul Qader took over in the transitional phase under whom the team played the first qualifier. Belgian Paul Put took over since July. 

Jordan’s FIFA monthly rank