{"id":118023,"date":"2025-12-23T14:57:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T14:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/all-news\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st"},"modified":"2025-12-23T15:04:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T15:04:34","slug":"spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st","title":{"rendered":"Spain Tops FIFA Rankings While Amavubi Remain 131st"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Rwanda. <\/strong><\/span>With the start of North America&#8217;s World Cup just over six months away, Spain will head into the new year as FIFA&#8217;s top ranked team, with two of the three host countries for the 2026 tournament tightly bunched together.<\/p>\n<p>Each of the three North America countries country will play host to FIFA World Cup games over the summer, with Mexico kicking off the tournament on 11 June 11 against No 61 South Africa at Mexico City.<\/p>\n<p>The United States (14th) will play their opening game against No 39 Paraguay on 12 June at Los Angeles, the same day Canada open their run against a yet-to-be-determined team at Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>Defending World Cup champions Argentina were ranked No 2 in the final poll of 2025, while runner-up France were No 3.<\/p>\n<p>England and Brazil completed the top five, while Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Croatia rounded out the top 10 in that order.<\/p>\n<p>The top 10 was unchanged from the November poll.<\/p>\n<p>Morocco have plenty of buzz heading into a World Cup year and will open 2026 one spot outside the top 10 while Adel Amrouche\u2019s Amavubi finish 2025 at 131st position. Rwanda is now seven spots shy compared to their ranking (124) at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n<p>FIFA will release its next updated poll on 18 January.<\/p>\n<p>Top 10 spots of FIFA&#8217;s December poll<\/p>\n<p>1. Spain<\/p>\n<p>2. Argentina<\/p>\n<p>3. France<\/p>\n<p>4. England<\/p>\n<p>5. Brazil<\/p>\n<p>6. Portugal<\/p>\n<p>7. Netherlands<\/p>\n<p>8. Belgium<\/p>\n<p>9. Germany<\/p>\n<p>10. Croatia<\/p>\n<p>11. Morocco<\/p>\n<p>131. Rwanda<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Rwanda<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Rwanda. With the start of North America&#8217;s World Cup just over six months away, Spain will head into the new year as FIFA&#8217;s top ranked team, with two of the three host countries for the 2026 tournament tightly bunched together. Each of the three North America countries country will play host to FIFA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":118022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[5482,758],"class_list":["post-118023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-fifa-ranking","tag-rwanda"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Spain Tops FIFA Rankings While Amavubi Remain 131st - Rwanda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With the start of North America&#039;s World Cup just over six months away, Spain will head into the new year as FIFA&#039;s top r ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spain Tops FIFA Rankings While Amavubi Remain 131st\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With the start of North America&#039;s World Cup just over six months away, Spain will head into the new year as FIFA&#039;s top r ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rwanda\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-12-23T14:57:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-23T15:04:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sites\/23\/2025\/12\/sm_1766489620.892759.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"666\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Spain Tops FIFA Rankings While Amavubi Remain 131st\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-12-23T14:57:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-23T15:04:34+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st\"},\"wordCount\":241,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sites\/23\/2025\/12\/sm_1766489620.892759.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"FIFA Ranking\",\"Rwanda\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"Sport\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/sport\/spain-tops-fifa-rankings-while-amavubi-remain-131st\",\"name\":\"Spain Tops FIFA Rankings While Amavubi Remain 131st - 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