MOSCOW, July 16. /TASS/. The Russian national football squad has retained its June’s 38th position with 1,470 points in the newly published World Ranking of the world’s governing body of football, FIFA.

The FIFA Ranking has remained static since its previous edition on June 11 as the world keeps fighting against the spread of the novel coronavirus and all international football fixtures, including friendlies, were put on hold.

Russia climbed to 38th place of FIFA World Rankings in December 2019, after having played 10 international fixtures that year. The 2019 international matches of the Russian national team were all played as part of qualifiers for the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup.

In March 2019, Russia lost to Belgium 1-3 and defeated Kazakhstan 4-0; in June 2019, Russia beat San Marino and Cyprus (9-0 and 1-0 respectively); in September 2019, the team routed Scotland (2-1) and Kazakhstan (1-0); in October 2019 the Russian footballers blanked Scotland 4-0 and then blazed past Cyprus 5-0.

The Top-10 of the new FIFA Rankings following the podium of Belgium (1,765 points), France (1,733 points) and Brazil (1,712 points) are: 4th England (1,661 points); 5th Uruguay (1,645 points); 6th Croatia (1,642); 7th Portugal (1,639); 8th Spain (1,636); 9th Argentina (1,623) and 10th Colombia (1,622).

COVID-19

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 13,731,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 587,770 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 8,181,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, 752,797 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 531,692 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 11,937 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.