The Maltese women’s national team ended the year on a good note after climbing five places to 96th in the official FIFA world rankings, published earlier this week.

This year, Mark Gatt’s girls figured in eight international matches in all, with four wins, two draws and two losses.

They beat Latvia in a friendly (3-0) and also had the better of Estonia (2-0) and Andorra (3-0 and 4-0) in the Aphrodite Cup tournament which was played in Cyprus. The drawn matches were against Latvia (1-1) and Israel (1-1).

The positive results reaped the national team 1,171 points, the same as Latvia, and two points behind Moldova (95th) in the world rankings.

The list also shows that there are seven national teams from the UEFA fold behind Malta in the world list for 2016.

These are: Luxembourg (99); Georgia (103); Cyprus (106); Macedonia (109); Andorra (125) and Azerbaijan and Armenia. The latter two sides were not classified in the rankings after being inactive for more than 18 months.

Denmark’s 2-0 win over neighbours Sweden saw the Danes climb to 15th (five places up) while the Swedes dropped a couple of places.

Sweden (8th), however, remain in the top ten, alongside Brazil and North Korea, who switched places at ninth and 10th.

The US continue to lead the way in the world list, winning all six of their games since the last rankings were published, scoring an astonishing 39 goals along the way as their year concluded with a flurry of impressive victories.

While two countries, Andorra and Rwanda, were making their maiden appearance in the rankings, no fewer than nine have dropped out due to prolonged inactivity.

The latest edition of the FIFA world rankings saw 127 national teams acquiring points in the classification thanks to their regular participation on the international scene.