Rwanda has moved one place up the Fifa/Coca-Cola rankings but dropped a place in Africa according to the August releases. Rwanda is now ranked 121 up from 122 last month and remains among the worst ranked football nation in the Cecafa zone but higher than Eritrea, Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia. Despite an improvement on the world rankings, Rwanda slipped one position down on the African ranking to 35 from 34. The Amavubi Stars head coach Michael Nees could not be reached for a comment as he persistently failed to pick up his phone. Rwanda, with three points at the bottom of the group V after four qualifying ties, will need a win in the last home game to win back the fans. Ethiopia is the leading nation from the Cecafa region with the best ranking of 92, followed by Uganda at 98 and Tanzania on 102. Africa’s top ranked country is Cameroon at 16th position in the world followed by Nigeria and Ivory Coast on 26th and 28th positions respectively. Elsewhere, there are no changes at the top of the latest world ranking. The gap between Brazil and Argentina, however, is so tight that the forthcoming FIFA World Cup qualifiers in South America could easily lead to a change in leader. Italy, France and Germany are next in line, whereas Croatia (6th, up 1) and Netherlands (7th, down 1) have swapped places and the Czech Republic (9th, up 2) have returned to the top ten after an absence of a month. Asia’s newly crowned champions, Iraq (64th), have jumped up 16 places after reaping 76 points on the strength of their magnificent feat in the AFC Asian Cup 2007. Korea Republic are perched even higher up the ladder (50th, up 8) alongside Asian Cup finalists Saudi Arabia (51st, up 10), who garnered even more points than the Iraqis. Ends
