World Football Elo Ratings

The World Football Elo Ratings (Elo is often pronounced E-L-O despite not being an acronym) is a ranking system for men's national teams in football. The method used to rank teams is based upon the Elo rating system method but modified to take various football-specific variables into account. Elo should not be confused with the FIFA World Rankings, which is more prevalent because it is the rating system used by the international governing body of football to rank men's national teams.

The ratings take into account all international "A" matches for which results could be found. 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 should be considered provisional.

The FIFA Women's World Rankings uses a simplified version of the Elo formula. The FIFA men's ranking, however, uses a non-Elo formula.

Top 40 ranking

Current table, as of October 2, 2008, of the World Football Elo rankings, compiled by the [http://www.eloratings.net/world.html World Football Elo Ratings web site] based on data provided by [http://www.world-results.net/ Advanced Satellite Consulting] .

Top 10 since 1970

The following is a list of the national teams with the highest average Elo score from Jan 1, 1970 to Oct 1, 2008. For a top 50, and top 20 lists per decade since the 1950s, see Strongest Football Nations by Elo Ratings

All-time highest ratings

The following is a list of national football teams ranked by their highest Elo score ever reached.

Number of goals

The number of goals is taken into account by use of a goal difference index. G is increased by half if a game is won by two goals, and if the game is won by three or more goals by a number decided through the appropriate calculation shown below;

If the game is won by one goal:$G\; =\; 1$

If the game is won by two goals:$G\; =\; frac\{3\}\{2\}$

If the game is won by three or more goals
*Where N is the goal difference:$G\; =\; frac\{11+N\}\{8\}$

Table of examples:

Example 2

Team B versus Team C (both teams approximately the same strength)

When the difference in strength between the two teams is less, so also will be the difference in points allocation. The following 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:

Note that Team B loses more ranking points by losing to Team C than by losing to Team A.

Notes

ee also

*FIFA World Rankings
*FIFA Women's World Rankings
*AQB Sports Ratings
*Aggregated Football World Ranking-List
*Elo rating system
*Unofficial World Champions (soccer)
*Strongest Football Nations by Elo Ratings

External links

* [http://www.eloratings.net/world.html World Football Elo ratings]
* [http://www.eloratings.net/system.html How the rankings are calculated]