As if we need any mathematical BS to decide what's the strongest league. PS. What the hell is Greece doing there? PS.2 What the hell is Czech Rep. doing there?
Although these teams are shit compared to the teams in better leagues, the teams are proberbly as shit as each other so it's harder for them.
A deeper list: 1. Spain 2. England 3. Italy 4. Germany 5. Argentina 6. France 7. Greece 8. Mexico 9. Braxil 10. Czech Republic 11. Hollland 12. Chile 13. Belgium 14. Turkey 15. Scotland 16. Uruguay 17. Colombia 18. Portugal 19. Russia 20. Peru 21. Paraguay 22. Israel 23. Bulgaria 24. Ukraine 25. Poland 26. Yugoslavia 27. Switzerland 28. Bolivia 29. Austria 30. Egypt 31. Denmark 32. Iraq 33. Croatia 34. South-Korea 35. Ecuador 36. Uzbekistan 37. Hungary 38. Algeria 39. Iran 40. Costa Rica 41. Norway 42. Sweden
So the Greek and Czech leagues are better than the Dutch or Portugese?? Lies, damn lies and statistics!!
Have you read their criteria closely? Pure crap. They just add the total points won in all competitions by the top five teams in the league!
Complete list: 1. España 1.209,0 2. England 1.183,0 3. Italia 1.119,0 4. Deutschland 1.053,0 5. Argentina 756,0 6. France 742,0 7. Hellas 716,0 8. México 707,5 9. Brasil 706,0 10. Ceská Republika 704,5 11. Nederland 702,5 12. Chile 676,5 13. Belgique 675,5 14. Türkiye 639,5 15. Scotland 617,0 16. Uruguay 603,0 17. Colombia 595,5 18. Portugal 578,0 19. Russia 507,0 20. Perú 496,5 21. Paraguay 490,5 22. Israel 470,0 23. Bulgaria 447,0 24. Ukraina 445,0 25. Polska 435,0 26. Jugoslavija 434,5 27. Schweiz 430,5 28. Bolivia 420,0 29. Österreich 413,5 30. Egypt 401,0 31. Danmark 390,0 32. Iraq 382,0 33. Croatia 374,0 34. Korea (S) 361,0 35. Ecuador 358,0 36. Uzbekistan 356,0 37. Magyarország 348,0 38. Algeria 342,0 39. Iran 336,5 40. Costa Rica 336,0 41. Norge 331,0 42. Sverige 322,0 43. Maroc 321,5 44. Japan 316,0 45. România 312,0 46. USA 310,0 47. Slovensko 304,5 48. Australia 301,5 49. South Africa 301,0 50. Saudi Arabia 297,0
take out chech republic and put holland in the top 10 and you got my list. the top 10 is accurate (except for chech republic)
For those needing a more graphic illustration of why this ranking is crap: Consider, as a random example, the J-League, ranked 44th here. When you add up the points won in all competitions by the top 5 teams, you get 316 points. We will now consider the thought experiment of replacing the entire bottom half of the league with high school teams. In Japan, high school teams compete in the Emperor's Cup, and some have advanced far enough to play matches against J-League teams. The J-League clubs almost always field reserve teams, and still tend to win by large margins. Only one high school team has ever kept the margin down to one goal. The result, naturally, is that the top five teams should now win 100% of their matches against anyone in the bottom half of the league, whereas in the past they may only have taken, perhaps, 65-70% of the points against the bottom half. Japan gains about 100 points in the ranking (including cups, etc.), and jumps from 44th to around 30th - yet no one in their right minds can claim that the league has improved in quality. Rather, the contrary. If that doesn't make the situation abundantly clear, let's create a brand new league in the fictitious nation of Lower Slobovia. Let's give it 20 teams, 5 of which are decent professional teams and 15 of which are of high school standard. The 5 professional teams can count on a combined 750 points from playing their weaker opponents alone - and anywhere from 40 to 60 points playing against one another. Let's also have a Cup competition in which the first-division clubs enter in the round of 64. Unless two of the top 5 teams run into each other early, we can expect 62 to 66 points for the top 5. This being a new league, no Lower Slobovian team gets past the first round of the Intertoto Cup, the first qualifying round of the Champions League, or the first qualifying round of the UEFA Cup. Doesn't matter. Lower Slobovia is guaranteed at least 852 points from domestic competition alone, making it the 5th-best league in the world despite failing to take a single point against clubs from other nations.
Your example is biased. Supposing that your hypothetical league is ranked as first level, that would give them 4 points per win (that's what a Spanish, English, Germans and Italians teams get). 750/5 = 150 points per team, 150/4 = 37.5 wins. On a normal home and away tournament, a top team would play 30 games per season with the 15 lesser teams, so what's happening with the other 7.5 games per team Lets fix your example, 120 points earned for each top 5 team on regular season, that means 600 points in total. Now you say that they get 40 to 60 points for play between them. In total there would be 5(5-1) = 20 attractive games in regular season, including home and away, 20(4) = 80! points between them. that's 600+80 = 680. Lets say they have 8 teams play-offs with home and away matches, that's 56 more points. 680 + 56 = 736. Now, we have the 64 teams Slobovia open cup, with single elimination. They IFFHS only assign the points won in eight-finals, quarter- finals, semi-finals and the final on this types of cups, that's 28 + 20 = 48 points. That's 48 + 736 = 784 points, at the most extreme case of unbalanced league, with a very long season. Now they are the 5 best league in the world. Not too much surprise, since they were ranked as a top league at the beginning, at par with Spain, England, Germany and Italy! (4 points per win, 2 per tie). Can you see the flaw in your example? In the real new Slobovia Premier League they would probably get just 2 points per win, and 1 per tie. That's 784/2 =392 points, just behind Egypt as the 31 league in the world. Of course that rankings have his flaws, it was designed to work in one place, EUROPE. I think that the top four is accurate. About Greece, I remember a strong show of Paratinaikos on the last Champion League, and about Ceská Republika, we must review the UEFA cup.
Um... no. As I read it, they used two different point values. 3-1-0 to rank leagues, and then the variable point values based on league strength to rank clubs. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The huge flaw is of course that there's absolute no reason why the top 5 teams in any league getting a huge number of points domestically makes that a stronger league than one where the top 5 get less domestic points. If anything the reverse is true, as it proves there is a lack of depth in the league.
http://www.iffhs.de/main/englisch/clubweltrangliste/berechnung/ "All national leagues are rated at four levels based upon performance. In this grouping, each country (where the club plays) is assigned a number indicating the performance level of each national league. Clubs in the highest level leagues receive 4 points for each match won, 2 for a draw and 0 for a defeat. Level 2 is assigned 3 pts. (win), 1.5 (draw) and 0 (lost), and so on with the next lower levels. The same system applies for the play-off matches."
Point conceded. However, does anyone seriously think that Lower Slobovia would then have the 31st-best league in the world? Let's say the 5 top teams are lower A-League quality, which still means they beat high school caliber teams 99% of the time. They are then ahead of: Denmark, Iraq, Croatia, South Korea, Ecuador, Uzbekistan, Hungary, Algeria, Iran, Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden, Morocco, Japan, Romania, USA, Slovenia, Australia, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia. Never mind that any team in any of these leagues could thrash any of the 5 "big clubs" in the hypothetical Slobovian league. Keeping in mind that domestic football is a fixed-sum game - if one team wins then another must lose - one should never include domestic results in an evaluation of leagues. In fact, I would venture that the worse the domestic performance of the top 5 teams in the league, the stronger the league is overall.
Of course this ranking systems has his flaws. It was designed to work on Europe, and I think that it does a reasonable job to rank teams there. When we go down the accuracy is lost. USA is behind Iraq, and my money would be on any MLS or A-league team over any Iraq's team. That is because that Iraq's league and the MLS receive the same amount of points per match, so the result is biased. Also, there's no way to do an objective way to measure the difference of play between Iraq's league and the MLS based only on club competition, since there's no international competition with teams of both leagues. Another way can be assigning an amount of points based on quality of players, for example: X amount of MLS players play on Y national team (ex: USMNT), which is level is Z. Then a formula F(X,Z) gives an extra amount of points for the MLS, which would be higher than Iraq's F(X', Z'). But no how we rank the national teams? The FIFA ranking? And what about the high quality players that will never be on a national team(for example: lots of Brazilians)
Well... the first thing I'd do is stop putting so much weight on domestic results, and try to make the ranking neutral with regard to size of league and length of season. Here's my first stab at outlining a ranking: 1) Results in international competition. Total points, perhaps power-weighted for opponents, is acceptable, as good leagues have teams that get deeper into tournaments. This should have by far the greatest weight - at least half (if not more) of the point score. 2) Caps earned by players in the league in 12-month period, from all divisions in the country. Caps should be weighted for FIFA rankings, because it's obvious that having a player capped for Brazil says a lot more than having a player capped for Liechtenstein. This can be a minor factor. 3) Parity. Leagues should be rewarded for depth. My idea is to base it on the standard deviation of points earned in domestic competition by all top-division teams. (n / sigma) where n is the number of matches played, and sigma is the standard deviation of points earned by all teams should give a reasonable measure of parity. Another minor factor. I'm tempted to add international friendlies as a minor factor, but friendlies aren't necessarily taken very seriously. On the other hand, it would be funny to tell Italy they suck because Juventus just lost to a club from the UAE. I haven't worked out anything mathematically yet, but it might be interesting to see how this kind of calculation would come out. My guess is that England, Germany, and Italy stand to gain the most from international caps, while the Primera Liga and MLS stand to gain from parity calculations. Scotland would definitely lose out in parity.