{"id":11919,"date":"2011-02-02T11:02:36","date_gmt":"2011-02-02T19:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/02\/02\/iran-up-21-spots-as-asians-soar-in-fifa-ranking\/"},"modified":"2011-02-02T11:02:36","modified_gmt":"2011-02-02T19:02:36","slug":"iran-up-21-spots-as-asians-soar-in-fifa-ranking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/02\/02\/iran-up-21-spots-as-asians-soar-in-fifa-ranking\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran up 21 spots as Asians soar in FIFA ranking"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<div>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0px;\">FIFA.com &#8211; <strong>As expected, the AFC Asian Cup Qatar 2011 has had a significant impact on <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 10px; float: right;\" alt=\"fifa-logo-4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/fifa-logo-4.jpg\" height=\"258\" width=\"383\" \/>the latest edition of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/worldfootball\/ranking\/lastranking\/gender=m\/fullranking.html\">FIFA\/Coca-Cola World Ranking<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are no changes at the summit of the global ladder, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=jpn\/index.html\">Japan<\/a> (17th, up 12), who became continental champions for a fourth time in  Doha,\u00a0have re-entered the top 20 after an absence of almost five years.  Fittingly, the Samurai Blue are now the highest-ranked Asian team as  well as being the third team &#8211; after hosts Brazil and world champions  Spain &#8211; to qualify for the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2013.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=jpn\/index.html\">Japan<\/a>\u2019s narrowly defeated opponents in the Qatar 2011 final, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=aus\/index.html\">Australia<\/a> (21st, up 5), as well as the losing semi-finalists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=kor\/index.html\">Korea Republic<\/a> (32nd, up 7) and this month\u2019s highest climbers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=uzb\/index.html\">Uzbekistan<\/a> (77th, up 31), have obtained their reward in terms of places and  points. Other Asian teams on an upward trajectory include <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=irn\/index.html\">Iran<\/a> <\/strong>(<em><strong>44th, up  21<\/strong><\/em>), Jordan (84th, up 23), Iraq (88th, up 10) and Qatar (90th, up 15).<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to their victories in the qualification matches for the CONCACAF Gold Cup 2011, Honduras (39th, up 17), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=crc\/index.html\">Costa Rica<\/a> (48th, up 21) and El Salvador (98th, up 18) are also heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0px;\">Due  to the significant devaluation of the points won a year ago at the CAF  Africa Cup of Nations, many\u00a0teams have slid down the rankings this  month. African champions Egypt (33rd, down 23), Nigeria (40th, down 8)  and Algeria (55th, down 19) have lost the most ground, but several  others have also taken a tumble.<\/p>\n<p>Four teams, Honduras, Iran, South Africa and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/associations\/association=crc\/index.html\">Costa Rica<\/a>, have made the leap into the top 50 this month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FIFA.com &#8211; As expected, the AFC Asian Cup Qatar 2011 has had a significant impact&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":6671,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}