By Chidera Akalonu

The Super Eagles of Nigeria moved up to the 41st position in the World and retained the fifth in Africa in the latest FIFA Coca-Cola world rankings.

The rankings released by the World Football governing body (FIFA) showed that Nigeria moved up three places from the 44th position in September, but maintained the fifth spot in Africa.

Nigeria’s win over Zambia wasn’t factored into the calculations for the rankings for September ‎with FIFA giving the Eagles point for the win and the draw picked up against Cameroon.

This Monday’s ranking is crucial as it will be used in the December 1 final draw for the 2018 World Cup competition. By the ranking, the Super Eagles are 18th among the 23 of the expected 32 teams for the World Cup. But in reality, Nigeria places 19th as the host country, Russia will be brought from the 63rd position it occupies to be in the top eight ranked team during the draw which holds in State Kremlin Palace in Moscow.

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But the 19th position is not permanent. It will change next month when the other nine qualifiers emerge. Some of the potential World Cup-bound teams currently rank higher than the Super Eagles.

Among them are Tunisia and Senegal, possible qualifiers from Africa’s Groups A and D respectively. Tunisia currently ranks 28th as against Nigeria’s 41st. Senegal are in the 32nd position, nine steps higher than Nigeria in the ranking.

Not only African sides are set to push Nigeria down the World Cup draw’s ranking. Four more teams in Europe will join the already qualified 23. As at now, there are eight countries jostling for the four spots. All, except Greece, are ahead of Nigeria.

However they are still 5th in Africa behind Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal and Congo DR ‎who are ranked as Africa’s top teams by FIFA going by their global ranking of 28th, 30th, 32th and 35th respectively.