Spain leads FIFA standing

(BEIJING, July 2) -- The new European champion Spain (1st, up 3) has for the first time taken the lead of July's FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, followed by Italy and Germany in second and third place respectively.

EURO 2008 had an obvious effect on the ranking, which saw Netherlands (5th, up 5), Croatia (7th, up 8), Portugal (9th, up 2), Russia (11th, up 13) and Turkey (14th, up 6) climb up, while Brazil (4th, down 2) and Argentina (6th, down 5) lost ground due to the recent results of qualifying games for the 2010 World Cup.

On the contrary, several teams climbed 20 or more places because of their excellent performances in the World Cup qualifiers: Burkina Faso (64th, up 47), Gabon (74th, up 20), Cuba (78th, up 26), Cape Verde (85th, up 24), Suriname (87th, up 58), Kenya (92nd, up 23) and Korea DPR (94th, up 24). Other teams that made striking progress in the top 100 include Nigeria (26th, up 8), Iran (37th, up 11) and Saudi Arabia (49th, up 5).

Spain is the fifth team to take the number one ranking (together with Germany, Brazil, Italy and Argentina) since the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking was introduced in August 1993.