Global rankings : http://www.footballdatabase.com/worldrankings.php?Rnk=1 USA (i.e. MLS) rankings : http://www.footballdatabase.com/nationalrankings.php?Rnk=1&Nation=United States
Another: 277 Buriram United Thailand 1485.92 That's the team former Quakes superstar Anthony Ampaipitakwong now plays for...
The problem with comparing the cross continental ratings is that there's very little competition between the continents on the club level and those are mostly in the quick knockout World Club Championship. But they are very useful within the continents due to a great number of the graded events that take place. The Mexican teams serve as a guiding signal in the Western Hemisphere since they participate both in the CONCACAF and the South American competitions, as well as in the WCC. In this sense, the Western Hemisphere teams ratings may be inflated in relations to the UEFA's but not in relations to each other and there's a lot of useful info to be derived from these cumulative rating services. So, the brief point of contention : Argentina - top Velez Sarsfield : 1632 pts, 16th rated club Quilmes 1482. Brazil - top Fluminense at 1741, 16th Ponte Preta 1487. Costa Rica - top Alajuelense 1499, 16th Puntarenas 1271 Honduras - top Olympia 1472, 13th Deportes Savio 1251. Mexico : top Monterrey 1593, 16th San Luis 1359 MLS : top LA Galaxy - 1480, 16th Chivas USA 1236
Their weighting scheme actually makes no sense. Because the Elo rating system is zero-sum, the higher weights for the more highly regarded leagues only creates large swings in Elo ratings from game to game. Note that the national team Elo ratings don't weight the different confederations' championships any differently; there the weight only reflects the importance of the competition for the team involved, which bears upon the likelihood that a team is at or near full strength.
This weighting scheme actually makes no sense. Because the Elo rating system is zero-sum, the higher weights for the more highly regarded leagues only creates large swings in Elo ratings from game to game. Note that the national team Elo ratings don't weight the different confederations' championships any differently; there the weight only reflects the importance of the competition for the team involved, which bears upon the likelihood that a team is at or near full strength.
Aguila 1381.22 Toronto FC 1290.59 TFC won 5-1 at home and 3-0 away in the CCL. River Plate PR 1404.62 (do they even exist anymore?) Chorrillo 1401.74 Houston Dynamo 1401.32 SJ Earthquakes 1398.44
I love how the Islanders are only Puerto Rico's fourth-best team, behind three teams from the island's semipro league. The same kind of thing happens whenever a team plays in a league across the border. Take, for example, Swansea City... they're only the third-highest rated team in Wales, behind two teams from the semipro Welsh Premier League. 81. The New Saints 1598.84 170. Bangor City 1536.12 172. Swansea City 1535.55 Moving across the Irish Sea... 360. St. Patrick's 1456.33 Ryan Guy was considered that club's best player for four years, and it plays in a league where Guy was in the Best XI in 2010. Which means he should have no trouble getting into the starting lineup for: 408. Real Salt Lake 1441.97 510. Sporting KC 1414.57 570. Houston Dynamo 1401.32 583. SJ Earthquakes 1398.44 But the wildest numbers are the ones from Oceania. 155. Auckland City 1542.71 That's above every single team in MLS. It's also above the following: 161. Athletic Club [Bilbao] 1539.04 162. Osasuna 1539.01 164. Rosenborg 1538.44 172. Swansea City 1535.55 175. Wolfsburg 1529.78 183. Torino 1525.6 It's still hilarious as you keep going down the Oceania rankings. Here's the top three teams from Papua New Guinea. Hekari United 1413.02 Eastern Stars 1356.03 Tukoko University 1352.22 Two of these teams are supposedly good enough to make the MLS playoffs... the 10th-highest-rated MLS team according to this ranking is FC Dallas at 1353.47.
Like I said, their cross-continental/conference rankings leave a lot to be desired because, using the same formulas for the national teams, the difference is that there's no shortage of the cross continental play among the nationals. The US has played Belgium, Italy, France, Brazil, Venezuela, Scotland, Slovenia over the last year and a half alone and that works to eliminate the disparities in Elo that FIFA still has. The LA Galaxy hasn't played in a meaningful cross-continent match since ... eh, ever. But this doesn't mean that their regional rankings are off. They just can't be compared by the total scores across the oceans.
I'd disagree. As I noted above, the rankings of Welsh Premier League clubs show the problems. I'm comparing them to their geographic neighbor Swansea City, a mid-table EPL club.
Ya, but which international competition does the Welsh League play? The problem is with the "stew in own sauce" competitions with zero or next to zero cross-reference. If you want to exclude them, it's fine by me.
The regional rankings are way off. This is the main problem: The ratings of newly promoted teams actually have a significantly larger impact on the overall ratings in each league than the results of international competition. However, with this elo rating system those very important ratings are just being arbitrarily assigned without any attempt to actually figure out what they should be. Newly promoted teams in semi-pro leagues are getting ratings that are only 250 points below a newly promoted EPL team, and only 50 points below a new MLS or J-league team. The actual gap in the strength of the teams is much larger than that. Because of this you end with weird results like having the champions of very weak leagues being rated higher than some EPL teams. In order to make this elo ranking credible, what it needs is a mechanism for adjusting the ratings of the newly promoted teams until they are at a reasonable level. What I would propose is after each season, if a league's teams have performed better in international competition than the teams elo ratings predicted then that league's W_0 should be increased and if the teams perform worse in international competition than their ratings predicted the leagues W_0 should be decreased. That way the relative strength of the leagues will be adjusted until it reflects reality.
The Best teams in the league aren't necessarily a good indicator of the quality of the bottom teams in the league and the relative strength of the league. The only thing that could fix the issues is more competition amongst leagues and regions at all levels of the game. But that is basically impossible.
The Elo system actually measures the relative strength between the top teams in a league and the bottom teams in the league much more precisely than it measures the relative strength between leagues. If you can adjust the algorithm so that it accurately predicts how well the top teams will do against each other in international competition, it should also give a fairly good idea of how the bottom teams compare (since you know how big the gap between the top and bottom teams is).
So, the argument is, MLS is roughly on par with the Honduran and Costa Rican leagues, a step behind Mexico 1st, and well behind Argentina and Brazil for this hemisphere? Ok. That part doesn't sound that far off to me. I think MLS has been chasing parity with the Mexican league for quite a while, though, most fans would say that they aren't there yet.
I buy that. The Europe vs. South America rankings also have to be reset as their base. Just because a few years ago Internacional edged a semi-interested Barcelona team doesn't mean that the Brazilian soccer league is close to the CL level competition.