One month on from the World Cup finals in Brazil, there is only one small change within the top 14 positions of the FIFA world rankings issued yesterday.

World champions Germany continue to lead the way ahead of Argentina and the Netherlands, but Spain have jumped one position and now share seventh place with Brazil.

World Cup quarter-finalists Costa Rica (15th, up 1) continued to climb up the ladder at the expense of the USA (18th, down 3), which means that the Ticos are now in their highest-ever position since the introduction of the rankings system in 1993.

The results of 23 international “A” matches were taken into account for the current edition of the world rankings.

Ten of these matches were friendlies, whereas the remaining 13 were qualifiers for the next Africa Cup, fifa.com reported yesterday.

It is little surprise, therefore, that the biggest movers of the month are mainly to be found in Africa, namely Lesotho (105th, up 26), Malawi (106th, up 15), Sierra Leone (50th, up 14), Benin (77th, up 14), Botswana (86th, up 13) and Guinea-Bissau (123rd, up 13).

This month also sees Sierra Leone make their first appearance in the top 50.

The Maltese national team remains in 150th position with 143 points, level with India.

In the UEFA classification, Malta is 49th, one place behind Cyprus and just ahead of Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, Andorra and bottom-placed San Marino.

Top 20 Fifa rankings

1. Germany, 2. Argentina, 3. Netherlands, 4. Colombia, 5. Belgium, 6. Uruguay, 7= Spain, 7= Brazil, 9. Switzerland, 10. France, 11. Portugal, 12. Chile, 13. Greece, 14. Italy, 15. Costa Rica, 16. Croatia, 17. Mexico, 18. USA, 19. Bosnia, 20. England.