U.S. men's national team continues free fall in FIFA World Rankings

The Chicken Littles who follow the United States men's national team have had more than a few reasons to believe the sky's been falling on Jurgen Klinsmann's side. Before last Sunday's confidence-boosting 2-0 victory over Panama, the Americans had won just one of their last nine games and had gone winless in five straight. A season-opening 3-2 defeat at Chile last month continued a trend of fall-from-ahead collapses.

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The release of the latest FIFA World Rankings on Thursday will only reinforce the belief that the USMNT is headed in the wrong direction.

The Americans dropped four spots from their January rank of 27th to 31st in the world. The last time the U.S. finished the year outside the top 30 was 2011 – the year Klinsmann took over for Bob Bradley – when it was ranked 34th.

Now, the FIFA rankings have been ridiculed over the years for their somewhat nonsensical methodology and apparent lack of logic when it comes to accurately assessing the performance of national sides. But even American supporters who dress up as a dead President would acknowledge that FIFA's ratings of the U.S. since the World Cup have been pretty spot on.

Here are the USMNT's monthly rankings since Brazil 2014, when it entered the tournament as No. 14 in the world.

September 2014: 17th
October 2014: 23rd
November 2014: 28th
December 2014: 27th
January 2015: 27th

Here's the U.S.'s new neighborhood in FIFA's rankings.

And here's the FIFA top 10:

Joe Lago is the deputy editor and soccer editor of Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @joelago.