The U.S. men's national team is ranked 23rd in the October FIFA Rankings, its lowest position since June of 2013. It's a six-spot drop from September. It's not a huge deal. FIFA's rankings are horribly flawed and don't take into account meaningful metrics like margin of victory. In addition, the U.S. has spent its post-World Cup friendlies trying to incorporate new players into the team. Since losing to Belgium in Brazil the U.S. has played three friendlies, beating the Czech Republic 1-0 and drawing both Ecuador and Honduras 1-1. During that same period, a bunch of European teams were able to amass FIFA ranking points while playing Euro 2016 qualifiers (which are worth more 2.5-times more points than friendlies). So yeah, don't freak out too much. Soccer fans would love to ignore these rankings entirely, but FIFA uses them to determine World Cup groups, so they aren't entirely irrelevant. The U.S. plays Colombia and Ireland in its next round of friendlies in November. Its next meaningful competition is the 2015 Gold Cup next summer. Here's the top-30 (full ranking here): Germany Argentina Colombia Belgium Netherlands Brazil France Uruguay Portugal Spain Italy Switzerland Chile Croatia Algeria Costa Rica Mexico Greece Ukraine England Romania Czech Republic USA Slovakia Ivory Coast Bosnia and Herzegovina Ecuador Iceland Austria Russia Join the conversation about this story »
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