Nigeria: Super Falcons Improve World Ranking Ahead of 2023 World Cup

Two excellent results in April against Fiji and New Zealand led to the team's ranking improvement ahead of the World Cup in July.

Nigeria's women's national football team, the Super Falcons, have improved their world ranking from 42 to 40, about 40 days before the commencement of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

The Nigerian team is still No. 1 in Africa, followed by South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire. This is still way below their best-ever ranking of 31, which they achieved in July 2019.

The last ranking before the new one was released on 24 March and between then and now the team has played two friendly matches, which they won. They beat Haiti 2-1 on 7 April, and got the better of World Cup hosts New Zealand 3-0 on 11 April.

The FIFA release stated, "National teams around the world have been engaged in warm-up matches for the upcoming FIFA Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023, while the Asian qualifiers for the Women's Olympic Football Tournament Paris 2024 have also been taking place.

"Those games have led to quite a few changes in the global hierarchy, except at the very summit, with the Top 5 remaining unchanged. USA (1st, -) are still out front, followed by the European quartet of Germany (2nd, -), Sweden (3rd, -), England (4th, -), and France (5th, -).

"There have been changes below, however, with Spain (6th, plus 1) and Canada (7th, minus 1) swapping places and Brazil (8th, plus 1) and the Netherlands (9th, minus 1) doing likewise, along with a good few other teams in the Top 50."

The USA is still the best-ranked women's team in the world, while Bhutan are the greatest movers, up from 178th position to 171st.

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