Ghana draw the curtain to a busy calendar of football rankings by finishing at 30th in the last Fifa rankings for the year 2012 released on Wednesday.

The Black Stars slipped one place down in the December edition of the rankings from the 29th spot it held in the previous rankings.

Ghana also ended the year as Africa's fourth best side on the continental ranking table behind Ivory Coast, Algeria and Mali in that order despite gaining 15 more points to leave their accumulated build up of 777.

World champions, Spain, held onto their lead to end the year as the number one side followed by Germany in second position with Argentina taking up third place.

FIFA says over the course of the year, the regional composition of the top 50 has only slightly changed: whereas the number of teams from UEFA (27 teams in the top 50), CONMEBOL (9), CONCACAF (3) and the OFC (0) remained the same, CAF (8, plus 1) finished the year with one team more in the top 50, at the expense of the AFC (3, minus 1).

The results of 143 internationals were taken into account for the December edition of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking.

In total in 2012, the results of 900 matches were taken into account, more than half of which were friendlies (465, 52 per cent) and more than a quarter of which were qualifying matches for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil (257, 29 cent).