New FIFA rankings - US stops free fall, Italy back in second

The last two FIFA rankings have seen the US fall from a top 5 team to 29th. Thankfully, the tumbling has stopped, at least for the moment. With no games played, the US was just coasting.

Here is the top 20:

Rank	Team	Aug Rank	Change
1	Brazil	1	0
2	Italy	5	+3
3	France	2	-1
4	Argentina	3	-1
5	England	4	-1
6	Germany	8	+2
7	Netherlands	6	-1
8	Czech Republic	7	-1
9	Portugal	9	0
10	Spain	10	0
11	Nigeria	11	0
12	Cameroon	12	0
13	Ukraine	13	0
14	Greece	22	+8
15	Switzerland	14	-1
16	Sweden	18	+2
17	Uruguay	15	-2
18	Côte d'Ivoire	19	+a
19	Mexico	17	-2
19	Croatia	24	+5

Teams falling out of the top 20 are Denmark (22) and Colombia (35).

The US is tied for 29th with Paraguay.

As I look at this list, one question comes to mind, does England sitting in fifth place mean that the new FIFA ranking system is not much better then the old ranking system? This question was asked, with good reason, when the US sat high in the top ten, so I think it is fair to ask it now. Having watched England play during the last two weeks, I'm not sure they are a top 10 team.

I can believe most of these other rankings are good guesses for what the teams can do, but I'm not sure about England.

But enough of me calling such things like that into question, let's see who did the best and worse this past month.

The big winners were Surinam and Bermuda who are tied in 122nd place after they each jumped 41 places, St. Vincent and the Grenadines who climbed 44 rankings to 85th, but even that movement is nothing compared to what Barbados did as they rocketed up 52 spots to 100th in the world.

On the downward side of things, Bolivia fell 28 places to 107th, Peru shed 33 rankings to end up in 79th and Guatemala went down 35 spots to end up as the 101st best team in the world.