Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 84.125.12.253 (talk) at 12:20, 9 July 2019 (←Removed redirect to World Football Elo Ratings). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Elo Ratings System for football is a ranking system for men's national association football teams that is published by the website eloratings.net. It is based on the Elo rating system but includes modifications to take various football-specific variables into account, like the margin of victory, importance of a match, and home field advantage. Other implementations of the Elo rating system are possible and there is no single nor any official Elo ranking for football teams.

Since being developed, the Elo rankings have been found to have the highest predictive capability for football matches. FIFA's official rankings, both the FIFA World Rankings for men and the FIFA Women's World Rankings are based on a modified version of the Elo formula, the men's rankings having switched away from FIFA's own system for matches played since June 2018.

Top 25

The following table shows the top 25 teams in the World Football Elo Ratings as they were on 8 July 2019. Each team's FIFA World Ranking is shown for comparison, as per the latest release on 14 June 2019.

Elo Rank	1 Year Change	Team	Elo Rating	FIFA Rank	Confederation
1		Brazil	2126	3	CONMEBOL
2		France	2050	2	UEFA
3		Belgium	2049	1	UEFA
4		Spain	2029	7	UEFA
5	4	Colombia	2012	13	CONMEBOL
6	2	Portugal	1981	5	UEFA
7	4	Netherlands	1979	14	UEFA
8	2	Germany	1971	11	UEFA
9	2	Uruguay	1956	8	CONMEBOL
10	5	England	1940	4	UEFA
11	1	Argentina	1926	11	CONMEBOL
12	2	Italy	1922	14	UEFA
13	3	Switzerland	1901	9	UEFA
14	2	Denmark	1890	10	UEFA
15	4	Mexico	1886	18	CONCACAF
16	6	Croatia	1885	6	UEFA
17	2	Peru	1876	21	CONMEBOL
18		Sweden	1827	17	UEFA
19	9	Ukraine	1824	24	UEFA
20	3	Chile	1809	16	CONMEBOL
21		Poland	1804	19	UEFA
22	10	Venezuela	1797	33	CONMEBOL
23	3	Iran	1796	20	AFC
		Serbia	1796	34	UEFA
25	1	South Korea	1786	37	AFC

Ranking by matches played as leader

The following is the list of nations who have achieved the number-one position in the World Football Elo Ratings since the first international match in 1872, ranked by number of days at the top position.

Nation	Games	Days as leader	First date as leader	Last date as leader
Brazil	301	10,745	12 Jun 1958	current
England	154	10,605	30 Nov 1872	11 Jun 1988
Germany	139	4,704	25 Jul 1966	9 Nov 2017
Argentina	123	9,165	20 Jul 1902	10 Nov 2016
Spain	78	2,869	28 Aug 1920	12 Oct 2013
France	73	2,022	12 Sep 1984	11 Oct 2018
Hungary	57	1,897	20 Sep 1952	13 Mar 1960
Scotland	42	5,966	4 Mar 1876	20 Oct 1926
Italy	41	2,694	7 Jun 1934	16 Aug 2006
Soviet Union	41	1,367	21 Mar 1963	25 Jun 1988
Uruguay	37	1,794	29 Aug 1920	16 Jun 1929
Netherlands	32	1,039	1 Jun 1978	4 Jul 2014
Denmark	6	676	5 Jun 1914	8 Oct 1916
Austria	3	11	27 May 1934	7 Jun 1934
Czech Republic	2	8	27 Jun 2004	8 Jun 2005

1. Number of games played (started) with the highest Elo rating amongst nations
2. Days spent as co-leaders are counted as a ½ day
3. Combined record of the Germany (1908–1950 & 1990–present) and West Germany (1950–1990) national football teams.
4. So far, only the Soviet Union national football team (1924–1992) has reached the #1 position, but any future efforts by the Russia national football team (1992–present) will be included.

History and overview

The Elo system, developed by Hungarian-American mathematician Arpad Elo, is used by FIDE, the international chess federation, to rate chess players, and by the European Go Federation, to rate Go players. In 1997, Bob Runyan adapted the Elo rating system to international football and posted the results on the Internet. He was also the first maintainer of the World Football Elo Ratings web site, currently maintained by Kirill Bulygin. Other implementations of the Elo rating system are possible but the Runyan system is the best known.

The Elo system was adapted for football by adding a weighting for the kind of match, an adjustment for the home team advantage, and an adjustment for goal difference in the match result.

The factors taken into consideration when calculating a team's new rating are:

• The team's old rating
• The considered weight of the tournament
• The goal difference of the match
• The result of the match
• The expected result of the match

The different weights of competitions in descending order are:

• World Cup Finals
• Continental championships finals and Intercontinental tournaments
• World Cup and Continental championship qualifiers
• All other tournaments
• Friendly matches

The ratings consider all official international matches for which results are available. Ratings tend to converge on a team's true strength relative to its competitors after about 30 matches. Ratings for teams with fewer than 30 matches are considered provisional.

Comparison with other systems

A 2009 comparative study of eight methods found that the implementation of the Elo rating system described below had the highest predictive capability for football matches, while the men's FIFA ranking method (2006–2018 system) performed poorly.

The FIFA World Rankings is the official national teams rating system used by the international governing body of football. The FIFA Women's World Rankings system has used a modified version of the Elo formula since 2003. In June 2018, the FIFA ranking switched to an Elo-based ranking as well, starting from the current FIFA rating points. The major difference between the World Football Elo Rating and the new men's FIFA rating system is that the latter does not consider goal differential and counts a penalty shoot-out as a win/loss rather than a draw; thus, a 7:0 blowout is considered equal to a 7:6 penalty shoot-out win (neither method distinguishes a win in extra time from a win in regular time). The FIFA method is also less sensitive to the difference in ratings and more sensitive to match status. Finally, World Football Elo Ratings considers all official international matches for which results are available, including those involving "unaffiliated" teams that are not a member of FIFA.

Calculation principles

The ratings are based on the following formulae:

${\displaystyle R_{n}=R_{o}+P}$

where

${\displaystyle P=KG(W-W_{e})}$

Where;

${\displaystyle R_{n}}$	= The new team rating
${\displaystyle R_{o}}$	= The old team rating
${\displaystyle K}$	= Weight index regarding the tournament of the match
${\displaystyle G}$	= A number from the index of goal differences
${\displaystyle W}$	= The result of the match
${\displaystyle W_{e}}$	= The expected result
${\displaystyle P}$	= Points change

"Points Change" is rounded to the nearest integer before updating the team rating.

Status of match

The status of the match is incorporated by the use of a weight constant. The constant reflects the importance of a match, which, in turn, is determined entirely by which tournament the match is in; the weight constant for each major tournament is:

Number of goals

The number of goals is taken into account by use of a goal difference index.

If the game is a draw or is won by one goal

${\displaystyle G=1}$

If the game is won by two goals

${\displaystyle G={\frac {3}{2}}}$

If the game is won by three or more goals

• Where N is the goal difference

${\displaystyle G={\frac {11+N}{8}}}$

Table of examples:

Result of match

W is the result of the game (1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw, and 0 for a loss). This also holds when a game is won or lost on extra time. If the match is decided on penalties, however, the result of the game is considered a draw (W = 0.5).

Expected result of match

W_e is the expected result (win expectancy with a draw counting as 0.5) from the following formula:

${\displaystyle W_{e}={\frac {1}{10^{-dr/400}+1}}}$

where dr equals the difference in ratings (add 100 points for the home team). So dr of 0 gives 0.5, of 120 gives 0.666 to the higher-ranked team and 0.334 to the lower, and of 800 gives 0.99 to the higher-ranked team and 0.01 to the lower.

Examples for clarification

The same example of a three-team friendly tournament on neutral territory is used as on the FIFA World Rankings page. Beforehand team A had a rating of 630 points, team B 500 points, and teams C 480 points.
The first table shows the points allocations based on three possible outcomes of the match between the strongest team A, and the somewhat weaker team B:

	Team A	Team B	Team A	Team B	Team A	Team B
Score	3 : 1		1 : 3		2 : 2
${\displaystyle K}$	20	20	20	20	20	20
${\displaystyle G}$	1.5	1.5	1.5	1.5	1	1
${\displaystyle W}$	1	0	0	1	0.5	0.5
${\displaystyle W_{e}}$	0.679	0.321	0.679	0.321	0.679	0.321
Total (P)	+9.63	−9.63	−20.37	+20.37	−3.58	+3.58

When the difference in strength between the two teams is less, so also will be the difference in points allocation. The next table illustrates how the points would be divided following the same results as above, but with two roughly equally ranked teams, B and C, being involved:

	Team B	Team C	Team B	Team C	Team B	Team C
Score	3–1		1–3		2–2
${\displaystyle K}$	20	20	20	20	20	20
${\displaystyle G}$	1.5	1.5	1.5	1.5	1	1
${\displaystyle W}$	1	0	0	1	0.5	0.5
${\displaystyle W_{e}}$	0.529	0.471	0.529	0.471	0.529	0.471
Total (P)	+14.13	−14.13	−15.87	+15.87	−0.58	+0.58

Team B drops more points by losing to Team C, which has shown about the same strength, than by losing to Team A, which has been considerably better than Team B.

See also

• Statistical association football predictions

References

1. ^ J. Lasek, Z. Szlávik and S. Bhulai (2013), The predictive power of ranking systems in association football, Int. J. Applied Pattern Recognition1: 27-46.
2. "2026 FIFA World Cup™: FIFA Council designates bids for final voting by the FIFA Congress". fifa.com. FIFA. 10 June 2018. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
3. "World Football Elo Ratings". Elo ratings. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
4. "FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking" (Press release). FIFA. 15 June 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
5. Graph of rankings at eloratings.net. Yearly graphs, like this one for 2018, give enough resolution. For individual dates, the Elo ratings table is also a good source.
6. Lyons, Kieth. "What are the World Football Elo Ratings?". The Conversation. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
7. "The World Football Elo Rating System". Eloratings.net. Retrieved 26 February 2012.
8. FIFA Council, 2026 FIFA World Cup™: FIFA Council designates bids for final voting by the FIFA Congress, 10 Jun 2018
9. FIFA council, Revision of the FIFA / Coca-Cola World Ranking

External links

• Website

v t e International association football
FIFA Federations Teams Competitions World Rankings The Best FIFA Football Awards Timeline Most successful clubs
World (FIFA)	FIFA World Cup U-20 U-17 FIFA Confederations Cup FIFA Gold Cup Olympic Games Youth Olympic Games
Asia (AFC)	AFC Asian Cup U-23 U-20 U-17 AFC Challenge Cup AFC Solidarity Cup Asian Games Regional ASEAN CAFA EAFF SAFF WAFF Arabian Gulf Cup East Asian Games Far Eastern Games South Asian Games Southeast Asian Games West Asian Games
Africa (CAF)	CAF Africa Cup of Nations U-23 U-20 U-17 CAF African Nations Championship African Games Regional CECAFA COSAFA UNIFFAC WAFU Central African Games Indian Ocean Island Games
North America (CONCACAF)	CONCACAF Gold Cup U-23 U-20 U-17 U-15 CONCACAF Championship CONCACAF Nations League CONCACAF Cup NAFC Championship CCCF Championship Central America and Caribbean Games Regional North American Nations Cup Copa Centroamericana CFU Championship Caribbean Cup LIFA Cup WIFA Cup Central America Games
South America (CONMEBOL)	CONMEBOL Copa América U-23 U-20 U-17 U-15 South American Games Regional Bolivarian Games
Oceania (OFC)	OFC Nations Cup U-23 U-19 U-17 Regional Melanesia Cup Polynesia Cup Pacific Games Pacific Mini Games
Europe (UEFA)	UEFA European Championship U-21 U-19 U-17 UEFA Nations League Regional Central European Cup Balkan Cup Baltic Cup British Home Championship Nordic Championship
Inter-Continental	CONMEBOL–UEFA Cup of Champions CPF Panamerican Championship CAF-AFC Afro-Asian Cup of Nations AFC–OFC Challenge Cup FIFA Arab Cup Palestine Cup Kuneitra Cup Overseas Cup Afro-Asian Games Arab Games Francophone Games GANEFO Goodwill Games Islamic Games Islamic Solidarity Games Lusofonia Games Mediterranean Cup Mediterranean Games Pan American Games
Non-FIFA	CONIFA World Football Cup CONIFA European Football Cup CONIFA South America Football Cup CONIFA Africa Football Cup FIFI Wild Cup UIAFA Great European Tournament Island Games Micronesian Games Universiade World Unity Football Alliance
See also Geography Codes Player/Club of the Century Women's football

• Use dmy dates from February 2012
• Association football rankings
• Rating systems