India Jump to Their Best Annual FIFA Rank in 6 Years

India jumped two places to finish 2016 at 135 in the FIFA rankings published on Thursday. This is India's 6-year highest annual ranking after 2009 when India finished the year at 134.

National coach Stephen Constantine attributed the upsurge to all his players and staff.

"It can't be achieved without the help of the players. We have an exceptional batch of players as we are in the process of building the team for the future," Constantine told www.the-aiff.com.

But Constantine wasn't much willing to go overboard with the new rankings.

"One of my priorities was to improve the national team ranking when I took over. The results do state that we have improved but there's still a lot more to achieve," he said.

"There have been so many positives for us in 2016. Right from the national team winning the SAFF Championship to the women's team winning the SAG gold to the national team beating a team as high as Puerto Rico 4-1 (ranked 114 at that time) in an international friendly, things are looking bright."

Great news for the Indian football lovers, we are finishing 2016 in 135, a 6-year highest annual rank of @IndianFootball #BackTheBlue pic.twitter.com/stYFp6Dswk

— Indian Football Team (@IndianFootball) December 22, 2016

He added: "The developments off the field saw us win the 2016 AFC Award for the Best Developing Member Association and we also had Uvena Fernandes, the first even Indian referee to officiate a World Cup final match. And of course we need to remember that we had an Indian club in the AFC Cup final for the first time ever and one of our youth development product becoming the first Indian player to play in the Europa League."

The draw for the AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers UAE 2017 will be held on January 23, 2017, and India would be playing their first match in the qualifiers on March 28.