Russia’s national football team in 48th place of FIFA World Ranking

MOSCOW: Russia’s national football team finished the year in 48th place of world’s national teams, according to FIFA’s updated rating published on the global football organization’s website on Thursday.

The Russian team did not have international fixtures in December, and played in November a friendly with Germany, losing 0-3, and a match of the UEFA Nations League against Sweden (0-2).

Therefore the team remained in 48th place in December edition of FIFA ratings with 1424 points, just like in November.

The top five remained unchanged against the previous month with Belgium in the top with 1727 points, followed by France (1726), Brazil (1676 points), Croatia (1634 points) and England (1631 points).

"Belgium will begin 2019 at the top of the FIFA World Ranking, having preserved their single-point lead over France at the table’s summit and emerged as the ranking’s Team of the Year," FIFA said in a statement.

"Les Bleus’ stellar 2018 has not gone unrecognized though, with the world champions established as the Mover of the Year, having gained more points (165) since December 2017 than any other nation," FIFA stated.

The rest of the top ten national teams are: Portugal (6th, 1614), Uruguay (7th, 1609), Switzerland (8th, 1599), Spain (9th, 1591) and Denmark (10th, 1589).

"It has been a good year in general for Europe, which now accounts for 31 of the top 50 teams - two more than in December 2017," the statement said. "Asia has also boosted its top-50 numbers from two to three, with that rise coming at the expense of Africa, which has seen its representation drop from eight.