FIFA began its end-of-year rankings in December 1992
and its regular periodic rankings in August 1993. For the first few
years, FIFA published the rankings 10 times a
year. Beginning in 1999, FIFA released a new ranking list every
month, although no ranking was posted in June 2002 because the World
Cup final tournament occupied the entire month.
The first ranking in December 1992 put England in
fifth place as a result of a fairly successful run under manager
Graham
Taylor. By the end of the following year, however, England had failed to qualify for the
World Cup 1994 final
tournament, were awaiting appointment of a new manager in the wake of
Taylor's resignation, had
dropped six places in the rankings and were no longer a top-10 team.
England sank to their lowest-ever
ranking, 27th, in February 1996 under Taylor's successor, national team
coach
Terry
Venables, as they
neared the end of a 30-month period in which they played 20 consecutive friendly matches, including three in the minor
Umbro
Cup International Challenge Tournament in 1995. This long break
in competitive play occurred because of England's failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup finals and,
primarily, their automatic qualification as host nation for the European
Championship 1996 final tournament.
The decline in the rankings came not because of England's results under
Venables, but because FIFA's
ranking calculations place a higher value on competitive matches than on
friendly matches. Immediately after England resumed competitive
play in the European Championship 1996 final tournament, where they reached the
semi-finals, their ranking leaped from 24th to 13th.
England attained their highest ranking, 4th, in
December 1997 under Venables' successor, manager
Glenn Hoddle,
after a highly successful
World Cup 1998 qualifying campaign. For 13 ranking periods over 15
months in 1997 and 1998, Hoddle's England remained a top-10 team. Following their round-of-16 exit
from the World Cup 1998 final tournament, their ranking dropped five places, from 5th to
10th, and, after their shaky start in the European Championship 2000
qualifying campaign, to 11th in September of that year. For the remaining few months of Hoddle's tenure, England
placed 9th, 10th or 11th, hovering on the fringes of classification as one
of the world's best teams. They remained in 11th place
following the one-match stint caretaker manager
Howard
Wilkinson put in after Hoddle resigned under pressure, a 2-0 friendly loss at home to France in February 1999.
But over the next 18 months, under manager
Kevin
Keegan,
England slipped well into the second tier in the world football
hierarchy, dropping from a high of 10th in April 1999, to a low of 15th
in July 2000, when they lost three places following their elimination
in the group stage at the European Championship 2000 final tournament. After a
brief rally up to 13th in August 2000--the product of other teams'
decline since England did not play in the interim--England sank to 14th in
the September ranking, despite the 1-1 friendly draw away to France, to 15th in
the October ranking as a result of the World Cup 2002 qualifying loss at
home to Germany that led to Keegan's resignation, to 16th in November after the
lacklustre goalless qualifying draw in Finland under Wilkinson, in charge
for a single match as caretaker manager for the second time, and
to 17th in December following the 1-0 friendly loss in Italy under another
temporary manager,
Peter Taylor.
They remained in that place in the first two rankings of 2001, which
reflected a period in
which they had no matches.
Restoration to ranking respectability began
promptly on
Sven-Göran Eriksson's appointment as head
coach in early 2001. England reeled off five straight victories, and by September were back in
the top 10 for the remainder of the year. Although they
hovered on the fringes of the top level in the first few months of 2002,
they have retained top-10 status since their 6th place quarterfinal showing at the
World Cup 2002 final tournament.
The 6th place rankings England reached in October
and November 2002, again in September and October 2003 at the close of
their successful qualifying campaign for the European Championship 2004
final tournament and yet
again in March 2004 were the highest achieved
under Eriksson, approaching the Hoddle team's high points, the 4th and 5th place rankings of late
1997 and early
1998. Their 7th place in December 2002 was the third highest
end-of-year ranking they had achieved, behind only 1992's 5th place and
1997's 4th place. Their
8th place in December 2003 marked the first time they had achieved an
end-of-year top-10 place for three straight years, eclipsing the
two-year streak attained under Hoddle in 1997 and 1998, just before his
resignation.
England finished in the top 10 in six of the 12 end-of-year
rankings released since the rankings began in 1992. They achieved
that feat only three times in the rankings' first nine years. They
did it another three times in the first three years Eriksson was in
charge, a remarkable improvement. They were ranked among the top 10 teams for
22
straight months, by far their longest top-10 streak, and appeared well on the way to entrenching themselves once again as one of the world's top-ranked
teams and becoming one of the elite top five teams.
But in the April 2004 ranking, after a 1-0 friendly match
loss to Sweden in late March, they dropped four places to 10th and fell out
of the top 10 to 12th in the May ranking, reflecting a period in which
they did not play. They sank to 13th in the June ranking following
the 1-1 draw with Japan and the 6-1 drubbing of Iceland in the FA Summer
Tournament. But their quarterfinal penalty kicks shootout
elimination at European Championship 2004 in Portugal was sufficient to push them back up to 8th in the July
ranking and to 7th in the August ranking. They remained there in the
September ranking following their 3-0 home friendly victory against the
Ukraine.
more to follow....
Further Information
The
FIFA
website contains the complete world rankings from their inception
and a description of the method by which the rankings are calculated.