Zurich [Switzerland]: India football team retained its 108th spot in the latest FIFA rankings issued on Thursday.
In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole raft of international fixtures including qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup and other major tournaments has been postponed.
The dates were redrawn for showpiece men's events such as the Olympic football tournament, CONMEBOL Copa America and UEFA EURO.
Against this backdrop, the ranking was impacted by just four matches - all friendlies - and, as such, remains all but identical to the previous edition.
Before football all around the world came to a standstill, Indian national football team were scheduled to take part in the second round of 2022 FIFA World Cup and 2023 AFC Asian Cup joint qualifiers. The ‘Men in Blue’ were to host Qatar on March 26, 2020, before taking on Bangladesh and Afghanistan in June. Out of those three teams, only Qatar (55th) are placed higher in the team rankings than India.
Meanwhile, the solitary change in the ranking chart sees South Sudan move into joint-168th position with Bermuda after the latter dropped a ranking point thanks to a 2-0 defeat in Jamaica (48th, unchanged) on March 11.
The five other teams involved in friendly matches since the global ladder's last update were Panama (played twice - 81st, unchanged), Uzbekistan (85th, unchanged), Belarus (87th, unchanged), Guatemala (130th, unchanged) and Nicaragua (151st, unchanged).
Belgium and France retained their first and second positions respectively in the latest rankings. Brazil is on the third place followed by England.
The novel coronavirus has infected almost 1.5 million people and killed over 88,000 worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
