Argentina is back at No. 1 in the Fifa World Rankings, reclaiming the top spot just ahead of the World Cup starting. Lionel Scaloni’s side passed Spain, which remained second, while France slipped two places to third.
The timing matters because the rankings helped shape the expanded 48-team World Cup, which was sorted into four pots of 12 based on position. The nine best-ranked teams joined the three host nations in Pot One, leaving the World Cup play-off qualifiers in Pot Four with the lowest-ranked sides.
For Scaloni, the move restores Argentina to the place it last held in July 2025 and gives fresh weight to a team that topped the South American qualification section and beat Honduras and Iceland in warm-up matches. The top of the list now reads Argentina, Spain, France, England, Portugal and Brazil, with Morocco, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany filling out the rest of the top 10.
That order also shows how tightly FIFA world rankings are tied to recent form. They are built on the Elo model developed by Arpad Elo, which gives teams points for wins and takes them away for losses. FIFA says it adjusts those totals for relative strength, match importance, the result itself and the outcome that was expected, which is why Argentina’s rise came after a clean run while France’s defeat by Ivory Coast cost ground.
There is one oddity in the list that sits beside the rest of the logic. Russia is ranked 35th even though it has been banned from FIFA and UEFA competitions since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and has played only friendly matches in the four years since. The ranking exists, but the route to improving it has been sealed off from the games that usually define a team’s standing.
The changes also reached the teams in North America. Mauricio Pochettino’s USMNT fell one place to 17th after a 3-2 win over Senegal and a 2-1 loss to Germany, Mexico climbed to 14th after wins over Ghana, Australia and Serbia, and Canada stayed 30th. Italy, meanwhile, was 12th and remained the highest-ranked nation not featuring at the World Cup, a reminder that the list measures standing, not qualification.
By the time the tournament starts, the rankings will already have done their quiet work. Argentina has the No. 1 spot back, Spain has kept second, and the next question is not whether the table will shift again, but whether the seeding it helped create will shape the first real shock of the World Cup.
