World Rankings: European champions Spain remained top of the world soccer rankings for a fourth straight month today after extending their lead over world champions Italy.
World Cup qualifying wins over Armenia and Bosnia were enough to keep Vicente Del Bosque's side comfortably clear of the Italians, who also enjoyed qualifying victories over Georgia and Cyprus in the past month.
Brazil climbed above the Netherlands and Croatia into fourth place off the back of their World Cup qualifying draw with Bolivia and away win over Chile.
Scotland's hopes of leapfrogging traditional rivals England, however, evaporated following a shock 1-0 defeat in Macedonia.
After suffering the largest drop of points in this month's rankings, Scotland fell 10 places, to 26th while England's win over Croatia helped Fabio Capello's team climb one spot to 14th.
Northern Ireland dropped three places to 35th while the Republic of Ireland are unchanged at 38th. Wales dropped eight places to 61st.
FIFA WORLD RANKINGS
(previous position in brackets):
1. (1) Spain
2. (2) Italy
3. (3) Germany
4. (6) Brazil
5. (4) Netherlands
6. (5) Croatia
7. (7) Argentina
8. (8) Czech Republic
9. (12) Russia
10. (9) Portugal
11. (11) France
12. (14) Cameroon
13. (10) Turkey
14. (15) England
15. (16) Bulgaria
16. (19) Israel
17. (18) Greece
18. (13) Romania
19. (26) Ukraine
20. (22) Uruguay
Selected others:
26. (16) Scotland
35. (32) Northern Ireland
38. (38) Republic of Ireland
61. (53) Wales
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)