DUSHANBE, August 5, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- Tajik national team has fallen seven places in the FIFA World Rankings and as of July 2009, it was ranked 155th among 203 men’s national teams in Association football.

Other national teams from the Central Asian region are ranked as follows: Kazakhstan is ranked 130th, Uzbekistan 70th, Turkmenistan 145th and Kyrgyzstan 160th.

The FIFA World Rankings is a ranking system for men''s national teams in Association football, currently led by Brazil, which followed by Spain.  The Netherlands is also among the top three .  Russia with 1181 points is ranked 6th.

The teams of the member nations of FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association), football''s world governing body, are ranked based on their game results with the most successful teams being ranked highest.  A point system is used, with points being awarded based on the results of FIFA-recognized international matches.  Under the existing system, rankings are based on a team''s performance over the last four years, with more recent results and more significant matches being more heavily weighted to help reflect the current competitive state of a team.

The ranking system was most recently revamped after the 2006 World Cup, with the first edition of the new series of rankings issued on July 12, 2006.  The most significant change is that the rankings are now based on results over the previous four years instead of the previous eight years.  The change is perceived to respond to criticisms that the rankings do not effectively reflect the relative strengths of the national teams.

The rankings are used by FIFA to rank the progression and current ability of the national football teams of its member nations, and claims that they create a reliable measure for comparing national A-teams.   They are used as part of the calculation, or the entire grounds to seed competitions.  The rankings are also used to determine the winners of the two annual awards national teams receive on the basis of their performance in the rankings.