A busy year of ups and downs has concluded with Ghana ending the year 29th in the latest Fifa ranking released on Wednesday.

The Black Stars, who remained unchanged from November's ranking, broke into the top 30 after a fine run in qualifying for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations.

Ghana have finished the year as Africa's second best side behind Ivory Coast after gaining no points to leave their accumulated build up of 761 points just like the previous month. Algeria are third with Egypt following up in fourth on the continental ranking table.

World champions, Spain still leads the overall standing followed by the Netherlands and Germany in third position. As the top team at year-end, Spain are the Team of the Year.

FIFA says the results of 57 new 'A' international matches have been recognised in the current edition of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, of which 51 were friendly matches and the remaining six were OFC World Cup qualification matches.

In total, 1,046 matches were taken into account over the course of the year.