Where do India feature in latest FIFA Rankings?

The Blue Tigers’ draw with the Golden Star Warriors in their international friendly helped improve their position.

The Indian football team have jumped up one place in the latest FIFA World Rankings that were released on Thursday (24 October). The Blue Tigers are now placed in the 125th position in the FIFA Rankings as they head into their upcoming international friendly match against Malaysia on 19th November.

The reason for this slight increase for Manolo Marquez’s side was their draw against Vietnam in the friendly game earlier this October. The Blue Tigers fought hard to scrape a result against the Vietnamese side, producing a pretty good second-half performance, with Farukh Choudhary scoring India’s first international goal in nearly four months.

As a result of the draw, India were awarded 0.26 points and that increase helped them move slightly upwards in the rankings. This also marks the first time in 2024 that the Indian team actually climbed up in the rankings. They began the year in the 102nd position, but a bad outing at the 2023 AFC Asian Cup saw them fall down the pecking order, to the 117th position on 15th February.

The Blue Tigers further plummeted to the 124th position on 4th April. They would go on to further slip down to 126 in the World Rankings that were updated in September but have now been able to climb up by one position in the latest rankings. India’s next opponent, Malaysia, have fallen down to 133rd position in the FIFA Rankings in the latest update.

Importance of India’s upcoming friendly against Malaysia

That is probably why the upcoming international friendly game is extremely important for both the national teams. India actually have a lot at stake in their upcoming friendly match at home, as they are yet to win a match in 2024. They’ll need to pick up the victory against Malaysia, who actually defeated them in their previous meeting at the Merdeka Tournament last year, to avoid going the entire 2024 without a single win.

A win against the Malaysia can also help India pick up more FIFA points and potentially climb up the FIFA World Rankings by a few more places before the end of the year.

Reigning world champions Argentina are still sitting comfortably in the first place in the FIFA World Rankings, with France and Euro 2024 champions Spain taking up second and third place respectively. Japan are the highest-ranked AFC team at 15th place.

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