The England manager, Steve McClaren, must have felt he had suffered enough pain and embarrassment in the past couple of weeks with his team now likely to miss next year's European Championship. But the Fifa world rankings, issued yesterday, have raised the prospect of further national humiliation with Scotland moving up to 13th place, just two behind England.
If Scotland qualify for Euro 2008, which they can do by beating Italy at Hampden Park next month, and England fail, they will leapfrog McClaren's team, who have dropped two places, in the rankings. The recent 2-1 defeat to Russia, who have soared 10 places to 16th, has left England depending on an unlikely sequence of results going their way to qualify.
England (population just over 50 million), and Scotland (population just over 5 million), have the oldest national rivalry in football, going back 1872, and the Scots would hugely enjoy putting one over on the old enemy.
Argentina have moved to the top of the rankings after winning their first two qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup. The South Americans secured 2-0 victories away to Venezuela and at home to Chile earlier this month to climb above Brazil and Italy in the monthly standings.
Italy, who were top last month, are now third despite two wins of their own but which are deemed to be of a lower quality. The World Cup holders matched Argentina with two 2-0 wins this month, over South Africa and Georgia, but gained fewer ranking points because of Georgia's low ranking and the fact that the game against South Africa was a friendly.
The Italians also dropped points under the rolling system used by Fifa to evaluate national teams, with a more heavily weighted win over Ukraine in October 2006 being devalued. France moved up two places to fourth, while Germany dropped to fifth despite having already qualified for Euro 2008. Spain, Holland, Portugal, Czech Republic and Croatia are the other teams above England.
Fifa rankings 1 Argentina (2), 1,533 points;
2 Brazil (3), 1,459
3 Italy (1), 1,387
4 France (6), 1,271
5 Germany (4), 1,245
6 Spain (7), 1,226
7 Holland (5), 1,207
8 Portugal (8), 1,203
9 Czech Republic (11), 1,174
10 Croatia (10), 1,155
11 England (9), 1,137
12 Romania (12), 1,086
13 Scotland (14), 1,049
14 Greece (15), 1,034
15 Mexico (13), 978
16 Russia (26), 960
17 Uruguay (19), 900
18 United States (18), 886
19 Nigeria (23), 841
20 Poland (16), 837
21 Norway (29), 830
22 Ukraine (17), 828
23 Cameroon (25), 822
24 Sweden (20), 821
25 Colombia (24), 801 ...
32 Republic of Ireland (32) 722
36 Northern Ireland (36) 716
58 Wales (52) 521