Jordan up 6 spots in FIFA rankings

AMMAN  — Jordan climbed up six spots to 57th place in the latest FIFA rankings issued over the weekend.

Following the recently concluded World Cup, there were big changes on FIFA top 10 rankings as newly crowned champs Germany took top spot followed by runners-up Argentina, the Netherlands, Columbia, Belgium, Uruguay, Brazil, Spain, Switzerland and France. 

The Kingdom, which qualified to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup 2015 in Australia, went up to fifth among Asian Football Confederation teams, and is now the top ranked Arab team in Asia and fourth ranked Arab team after Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia.

Asian rankings are led by Japan at 45th spot, followed by Iran (49), Uzbekistan (52), South Korea (56), Jordan (57), the UAE (65), Oman (69), Australia (76), Saudi Arabia (78) and Palestine (98) — after they qualified to the Asian Cup for the first time and shot up 71 spots last month.

Jordan advanced to the Asian Cup finals after finishing second in Group A qualifiers behind leaders Oman. They will play in Group D with 2011 titleholders Japan, Iraq and Palestine.

The qualifiers included 25 teams playing in five groups of four teams each. The top two teams from each group and the best third-placed team qualified to the tournament set for January 9, 2015. Teams qualifying automatically to the finals include 2011 Asian Cup champions Japan, third-placed South Korea, hosts and runners-up Australia, AFC Challenge Cup 2012 winners North Korea and 2014 AFC Challenge Cup champs Palestine. 

Jordan last played Columbia in June, losing 3-0 in an important friendly as the squad kicked off a series of high level friendlies in preparation for Asian Cup 2015. The Jordan Football Association (JFA) has now scheduled six other matches aimed at giving the line-up optimum competitive experience against leading teams as they prepare for their third participation in the Asian Cup. 

Jordan is set to host Uzbekistan on September 3, China on September 9, Malaysia on October 11, South Korea on November 14, the UAE on December 31 and Bahrain on January 4, 2015.

In its past eight times since first taking part in Asian Cup qualifiers in 1972, Jordan reached the finals twice. In the 13th Asian Cup, it lost to Japan in the quarter-finals and jumped to the best ever FIFA ranking of 37th place in August 2004. In 2011, Jordan again reached the quarter-finals where it lost 2-1 to Uzbekistan.

During 2013, Jordan climbed 30 spots and ended the year in 65th place overall and 5th among AFC teams.