US misses 5th place in FIFA rankings by 1 point

What is it with the US missing things by one point? First they miss a seeded spot in Germany by 1 point now they miss out on a four-way tie for 5th place in the December FIFA rankings by 1 point. It does make one wonder. Anyway, there was very little action on most of the list due to a lack of games being played. So here is the top 20

Pos - Team - Pts - (Nov Rank)
1 Brazil 840 (1)
2 Czech Republic 796 (2)
3 Netherlands 791 (3)
4 Argentina 772 (4)
5 Mexico 768 (7)
5 Spain 768 (6)
5 France 768 (5)
8 USA 767 (8)
9 England 757 (9)
10 Portugal 754 (10)

11 Turkey 748 (11)
12 Italy 741 (12)
13 Denmark 733 (13)
14 Sweden 732 (14)
15 Japan 715 (15)
16 Germany 708 (16)
16 Greece 708 (17)
18 Uruguay 706 (18)
19 Iran 703 (19)
20 Croatia 701 (20)

Not a lot of action going on. Mexico moved up from 8th to a tie for 5th, but they have the same number of points from last month. Both France and Spain lost points. The US gained a point but stayed in 8th place. Other then that, nothing much changes.

When we look at the full list, there were some big gains. Ethiopia moved up 16 places to 112th, Rwanda jumped 17 rankings to 89th and the big winner of the list is Iraq who shot up 20 spots to 54th place.

On the other side of the big moves we have the British Virgin Islands slipping down 8 to 171, Oman who fell 12 places to 91st and Qatar who flopped down 14 spots to 95th.

None of the rankings for America's World Cup group changed. The Czech are 2nd, US 8th, Italy 12th and Ghana 50th. One interesting note, Trinidad & Tobago moved up 1 spot to tie Ghana for 50th place.

The January rankings should look similar to these.