TERRY Butcher has challenged Scotland's players to use the prospect of overtaking England in the Fifa rankings as a springboard to qualification for the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.
Yesterday's latest monthly world rankings issued by Fifa saw England slip to 15th place, just one in front of the Scots who held onto 16th spot. The news brought a wry grin to the face of former England captain Butcher who is now assistant to Scotla
nd manager George Burley.
Scotland open their campaign to reach the World Cup finals with a Group Nine double header away to Macedonia on Saturday and Iceland next Wednesday. If they pick up more points than England do in their opening Group Six ties away to Andorra and Croatia on the same days, then it is possible the Scots could leapfrog their ancient rivals in next month's world rankings for only the second time.
"Hopefully we will overtake England, because that means we will have won games on the road to World Cup qualification," said Butcher. "I'm English, but my priority is Scotland now. England can do whatever they want, in fact I don't even know who else they've got in their group after Croatia next week. I'm not bothered about their group any more, I'm only interested in what we do."
Since Fifa introduced the world rankings 15 years ago, Scotland have only been above England once. It happened in June 1995, when Scotland were in the midst of a successful qualifying campaign for the European Championship finals the following year.
On that occasion, Craig Brown's Scotland team climbed to 21st in the rankings, one place ahead of England. The Scots were only able to briefly enjoy those bragging rights as England went back above them the following month and have remained so ever since.
The nadir for Scotland came in March 2005 when, as a consequence of Berti Vogts' cataclysmic tenure as manager, the national team slumped to 88th in the world rankings, a massive 80 places behind England.
The gap has been steadily closed since thanks to the effective work of Walter Smith and then Alex McLeish, leaving Burley with the opportunity to take Scotland above England for the first time in 13 years.
There is a greater significance to the Fifa rankings now, however, as they are used to determine the seedings for future World Cup qualifying groups. Butcher believes the morale of the Scotland squad is also enhanced by positive progress up the ratings.
"We look at what we do on the pitch rather than on any sort of ranking list," he said, "but it can't help but make players feel better about themselves when they see how high up Scotland are at the moment. It's quite nice. You can easily drop down again, of course, and sometimes you can do so without even playing any matches. But it does give you a bit of a glow when you look at it today and see how high up we are."
FACT BOX
FIFA world rankings1. (1) Spain.
2. (3) Italy.
3. (2) Germany.
4. (4) Netherlands.
5. (5) Croatia.
6. (6) Brazil.
7. (7) Argentina.
8. (8) Czech Republic.
9. (9) Portugal.
10. (13) Turkey.
11. (12) France.
12. (10) Russia.
13. (11) Romania.
14. (15) Cameroon.
15. (14) England.
16. (16) SCOTLAND.17. (17) Bulgaria.
18. (18) Greece.
19. (20) Israel.
20. (19) Ghana.
The full article contains 575 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
