European champions Spain remained on top of the football world rankings for a fifth successive month following the publication of the latest FIFA standings yesterday.

Spain celebrated back-to-back World Cup qualifying victories over Belgium and Estonia in October to maintain their perfect record in the campaign so far.

Germany, who also won twice in October, have climbed back into second place at the expense of Italy with the world champions paying the price for last month's goalless World Cup qualifying draw in Bulgaria.

After failing to qualify for Euro 2008, England saw their stock improve as they re-entered the top 10 for the first time since the June tournament.

England, who beat Kazakhstan and Belarus in World Cup qualifying last month, are one of only three European sides, along with Spain and the Netherlands, to have won all their qualifiers to date. Brazil, the highest ranked of the non-European teams, slipped one place to fifth, mainly due to their goalless home draw against Colombia on Oct. 15.

This month's major movers among the top 50 were Switzerland (27th, up 18), Serbia (30th, up 10), Ecuador (31st, up 11) and Slovakia (45th, up 15).

Also returning to the top 50 along with Slovakia are Mali (49th, up 4). There was no change to the top 50 in terms of regional rep-resentation, as Senegal (51st, down 2) and Norway (54th, down 15) have dropped out of this group.

Malta's slide down the FIFA rankings continues. Back-to-back defeats in the World Cup qualifiers away to Denmark (0-3) and at home to Hungary (0-1) saw Malta drop four places in this month's classification, from 146th to 150th.

A little piece of history has been made at the bottom of the table: Timor-Leste, who have only been affiliated to FIFA since 2005, achieved the first success of their short footballing existence by drawing 2-2 with Cambodia, thus climbing to 198th position.