The New Zealand men's team is top-20 in the first official FIFA futsal world rankings after qualification for the World Cup.
Powerhouses Brazil are the first number-one nation in both the men’s and women’s charts as the rapidly growing sport takes another major step forward.
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The New Zealand Futsal Whites team are ranked 19th among the 139 ranked nations after qualifying for the FIFA Futsal World Cup in Uzbekistan 2024.
Recently the competed in a tournament in Vietnam facing the host side, Iran and Morocco.
The draw for the FIFA Futsal World Cup in Uzbekistan later this year will be made on May 26, as the build-up continues to the first FIFA tournament to be hosted in Central Asia.
The Futsal World Cup will be held from September 14-October 6 across three host cities; the capital Tashkent; Andijan and Bukhara.
The New Zealand Futsal Ferns women's team are ranked 26th in the world. .
Although the FIFA world rankings for football have existed since December 1992 and women’s senior national football teams have been officially ranked by FIFA since 2003, that has not previously been the case for futsal.
However, the indoor game has enjoyed exponential growth in recent years and this milestone moment represents the natural next step, as well as being the first time that FIFA men’s and women’s rankings have been launched concurrently.
The initial rankings have been based on statistics gathered from over 4600 “A” matches. FIFA defines an international “A” match as a match between two FIFA members for which both members field their first representative team (“A” team).
In the nine editions of the FIFA Futsal World Cup to date, the inaugural top-ranked men’s side, Brazil, have been crowned world champions five times and only failed to finish on the podium once. They are closely followed in the chart by Portugal, who arrive at this year’s FIFA Futsal World Cup as the title holders and have won the last two European crowns.
Brazil’s women’s national team have been just as dominant as their male counterparts, having won all seven of the South American championships that they have contested.