World Soccer Rankings

Though World Cup Weekend has finished, today I wanted to post again about world soccer. Over the years Brazil has dominated the FIFA World Rankings but it has not always proven to mean a lot when the World Cup comes around. Brazil was not at the top of the rankings when they won the 1994 and 2002 World Cups and France was not on top in 1998, nor Italy in 2006. In recent years it has at least become more fluid with the top position changing hands much more often.
You may or may not be surprised to know that some of the current top 25 are not in the World Cup. In fact, Croatia, Russia and Egypt the #10-12 teams and neither are Norway or Ukraine the #22-23 teams. This is because of World Cup qualifying and the number of spaces alotted to continental soccer federations. Some notable rankings at the moment are Italy, Germany, Argentina, England and France are #5-9 in the rankings and between them have won 11 World Cups. Actually there are only two other countries outside that group who have ever won a World Cup, one is Brazil (currently #1)with 5 wins and the other is Uruguay (currently #16) with 2 wins.