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Monday, September 12, 2011

FIFA Ranking: Greatest upsets

Chris Wathan asked me how big of an upset a Wales victory against England would be based on FIFA rankings. I thought this would also make an interesting post.

So here's the top 20 upsets with two restrictions:

  • only competitive matches
  • losing team must be in the top 20 of the FIFA ranking at the time of the match
Of course, this list only includes matches played after 8 August 1993 - the first edition of the FIFA ranking.

Date - Match type - Team 1 - Team 2 - Result - Rank 1 - Rank 2 - Rank difference


10-Oct-10 CQ Niger Egypt 1:0 (1:0) 154 9 145
20-Aug-97 WQ Bosnia-Herzegovina Denmark 3:0 (3:0) 117 3 114
06-Jun-07 CQ Armenia Poland 1:0 (0:0) 128 18 110
07-Sep-05 WQ Northern Ireland England 1:0 (0:0) 116 7 109
07-Jun-95 CQ Belarus Netherlands 1:0 (1:0) 113 7 106
02-Sep-11 CQ Wales Montenegro 2:1 (1:0) 117 19 98
10-Nov-96 WQ Congo Zambia 1:0 (0:0) 110 16 94
06-Jul-95 CF Mexico Paraguay 1:2 (1:0) 7 100 93
06-Sep-08 WQ Austria France 3:1 (2:0) 101 11 90
17-Oct-07 CQ Georgia Scotland 2:0 (1:0) 104 14 90
08-Oct-10 CQ Armenia Slovakia 3:1 (1:1) 105 16 89
09-Sep-07 CQ Equatorial Guinea Cameroon 1:0 (1:0) 105 16 89
10-Oct-98 CQ Denmark Wales 1:2 (0:0) 18 107 89
21-Nov-07 CQ Belarus Netherlands 2:1 (0:0) 94 7 87
11-Oct-95 CQ Georgia Bulgaria 2:1 (1:0) 100 14 86
28-Mar-01 WQ Belarus Norway 2:1 (1:0) 99 14 85
06-Sep-98 CQ Norway Latvia 1:3 (1:1) 11 94 83
04-Sep-04 WQ Albania Greece 2:1 (2:1) 94 14 80
07-Nov-01 WQ Bolivia Brazil 3:1 (1:1) 81 2 79
01-Jun-96 WQ Sudan Zambia 2:0 (1:0) 94 15 79






CQ = Continental Qualifier
WQ = World Cup Qualifier
CF = Continental Final

About me:

Christian, husband, father x 3, programmer, Romanian. Started the blog in March 2007. Quit in April 2018. You can find me on LinkedIn.

1 comment:

  1. I knew Northern Ireland were in a Wales-esque situation with ranking points when they beat England, so I knew I'd see them in this list.

    How nice of us to help them out :)

    What, you thought they actually beat us? No, no, we just let them win because we felt sorry for them. :)

    I think I'll just go see what that did for NI... it didn't even get them into the top 100, I'm surprised. Up 15 places to 101st.

    ReplyDelete