England, at least not during my lifetime, has never been a world class team. Yes, we qualify (except for Euro 2008!) for all tournaments almost faultlessly, but when we do that we play Wales, Lithuania, Estonia etc, teams that would cause any top 32 team very little worries. Whilst Argentina, Spain and Italy remain at large, we will always lose, we just are not good enough.
The FIFA ranking do us a massive compliment: we are sixth, yet teams like Italy and Portugal are lower. Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Germany and Holland are all above us, yet to be honest; I think we would lose to any of the top 16 in a professional competition.
It is nice to see others in the top 16 though - Russia, Chile, Japan, Norway, Greece, Croatia and Uruguay: who would have put money on that lot being above France four years ago? I wish them all the best of luck for the future; they've got more going for them then Rooney et al.
NB - the rankings are from March 2011, update due Wednesday.
Interesting stuff also of note:
France are world number 18;
Northern Ireland are the second best home nation (though the Republic are higher).