England's away match against Serbia on Tuesday was their toughest qualifier for the 2026 World Cup on paper but they chose Belgrade to take the handbrake off.
Thomas Tuchel took over as England manager at the start of the year and the national team's first performances under the new manager were uninspiring despite a perfect record in qualifying Group K and five clean sheets on the bounce.
The Three Lions won 5-0 against Serbia to go seven points clear at the top of the group and put themselves on the cusp of qualifying for the finals in the United States, Canada and Mexico next summer.
They barely broke a sweat in Belgrade but the previous four qualifiers were more laboured and England were comfortably beaten by Senegal in a friendly at the City Ground in June.
Advert
Nevertheless, Tuchel's England have been ranked as the fifth best national team in the world in 2025.
FIFA's quarterly official world rankings will be updated this month but the possibility of a slight drop in their position has emerged thanks to the annual update of the World Football Elo Ratings.
The unofficial Elo Ratings are based on a complex system of match importance, opposition difficulty and results initially developed to rank chess players.
Variables such as match-by-match goal difference, win expectancy and previous rating are all factored in, creating a table of ratings that "tend to converge on a team's true strength relative to its competitors after about 30 matches."
The Elo ratings update for 2025 list England behind European champions Spain, world champions Argentina, France and Portugal.
With 2019 ranking points, Tuchel's team sit in fifth ahead of Colombia in sixth, Brazil in seventh and the Netherlands in eighth.
Tuchel has won all of his competitive matches in the England job and looks set to secure World Cup qualification with games to spare.
England's results in 2025
They've beaten Andorra twice in Group K as well as seeing off Albania and Latvia in Tuchel's first two games in charge.
Tuesday's 5-0 win over Serbia ensured that England kept their 100 percent record without conceding a goal, but the new manager tasted defeat in Nottingham and conceded three times in the friendly loss at the hands of Senegal.
Topics: Football, Football World Cup, England, Thomas Tuchel
Chris Nee