Five-times World Cup winners Brazil hit a new low in the FIFA rankings yesterday as they dropped to 19th while Ecuador moved into the top 10 for the first time.

Brazil’s 4-0 win over Bolivia at the start of this month, their first since Luiz Felipe Scolari took the reigns for a second stint, failed to stop the rot after draws against Italy and Russia at the end of March.

Part of Brazil’s decline is because they are not involved in World Cup qualifiers and friendlies count for fewer points under the complicated calculations system.

Brazil are the fifth-best South American team in the rankings behind Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay.

There was no change in the top three where Spain lead from Germany and Argentina.

England dropped three places following their 1-1 World Cup qualifying draw in Montenegro.

Roy Hodgson’s side also cashed in with an 8-0 win over San Marino but that was not enough to keep them from slipping to seventh place, overtaken by Portugal (fifth) and Croatia (fourth).

Malta have paid the price for their World Cup qualifying defeats to Bulgaria (6-0) and Italy (2-0) last month as they plummeted to 157th in the latest list, a drop of 10 places.

TOP 10

1. Spain 1,538; 2. Germany 1,428; 3. Argentina 1,292; 4. Croatia 1,191; 5. Portugal 1,163; 6. Colombia 1,154; 7. England 1,135; 8. Italy 1,117; 9. Netherlands 1,093; 10. Ecuador 1,056.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.