Updated Action Network’s International Soccer Power Rankings: England Still Sitting at No. 1; USA in 11th Place Ahead of World Cup Draw (March 31)

Goal of These Rankings

The reason I decided to take on this project was because I saw a lot of weaknesses in the FIFA rankings and the organization’s path to properly determining who’s the best team in the world.

For example, let’s take a look at the current Top 20 compared to their odds to win the World Cup later this year in Qatar.

Belgium, the No. 1 team in the world according to FIFA, has the seventh-best odds to win the 2022 World Cup. Germany, at No. 12, has the fifth-best odds.

That said, the betting market and FIFA rankings are clearly not in line, as you can clearly see below:

So, I decided to try and combat that by creating my own power rankings, to determine who’s the world’s best team based on a couple different factors that have nothing to do with what FIFA uses to create its rankings.

Four Factors Determining Rankings

1)  Expected Goals Results

I am a big believer that expected goals is a better indicator of a nation’s performance rather than just what the final score winds up being.

Expected Goals or (xG) measure the quality of a chance by calculating the likelihood that it will be scored from a particular position on the pitch during a particular phase of play. This value is based on several factors from before the shot was taken. xG is measured on a scale between zero and one, where zero represents a chance that is impossible to score and one represents a chance that a player would be expected to score every single time.

I have gone through and logged every country’s xG results, but only from competitive competitions, meaning no results from friendlies or Nations League competitions were included.

Here are the following competitions that are included for each confederation:

UEFA (Europe) 

• • European Championship Qualifiers
  • European Championships
  • World Cup Qualifiers

CONMEBOL (South America)

• • Copa America
  • World Cup Qualifiers*

CONCACAF (North America)

• • Gold Cup
  • World Cup Qualifiers*

CAF (Africa)

• • Africa Cup of Nations Qualifiers
  • World Cup Qualifiers
  • Africa Cup of Nations*

AFC (Asia)

• • World Cup Qualifiers*

OFC (Ocenia)

• • World Cup Qualifiers*

* Competition is either ongoing or still yet to be played

2) Transfer Value Adjustment

I use Michael Caley’s method of using a team’s overall transfer value to account for the talent level of each country.

Using Transfermarkt data and running a few different calculations, these are the top 25 countries based on total transfer-market value, along with the amount added or subtracted (if the countries total transfer value is below the world average) to their xG differential to help determine the overall rating.

*(data via transfermarkt.com)

3) FIFA Coefficients

Similar to the idea of UEFA Coefficients, which help determine how many teams each country can get into the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League, I wanted to put a coefficient on each continent.

UEFA Coefficients are determined by how well the club teams from each country do in European competitions.

So, I applied that same method to FIFA Coefficients by going back through the last five World Cup competitions and gave out point values (based on the criteria below), along with a weight for the average transfer value by continent to get to a value that can be added to each country’s rating based on what continent it resides in.

FIFA Coefficient Points: 

1. Two points: For all wins in the group stage & knockout stage
2. One point: For all draws in the group stage
3. Two points: Bonus for finishing second in the group
4. Four points: Bonus for winning the group
5. One point: Bonus for each round reach from the Round 16 onward

After some calculations, here are the following “FIFA Coefficients” that are added to each country’s xG differential plus transfer value adjustment:

As you can see, Europe and South America are weighted far greater than the rest of the world, which makes sense considering no team outside of Europe or South America has made the semifinal round in the last four tournaments.

4) Strength of Schedule 

Strength of Schedule needs to be taken into account when determining rankings like this:

Inside Continent

First, there is a strength-of-schedule adjustment at the inner continent level, which starts by ranking each team based on its xG differential plus transfer value adjustment. Then, from the average strength of schedule for that specific continent divided by each team’s average rank played, you get the “percentage above/below the average strength of schedule.”

So, for example, England’s average rank of teams faced throughout European qualifiers, Euro 2020 and World Cup qualifiers was 29.12, when the average strength of schedule was 26.64 for Europe. That means, on average, England played a slightly easier schedule.

So, we then take 26.64/29.12 to get 91.49% and then we subtract that from 100% (indicating the average strength of schedule being 100%) and get an adjustment of -8.51% from their xG plus transfer value rating.

Worldwide

Even though FIFA coefficients can give us a good weight for each continent’s true level of play, another strength of schedule at the world level is necessary to properly rate each country.

So, there’s a “final ranking before strength of schedule adjustment,” which is the Final rating after taking into account xGDiff plus transfer value adjustment plus inner continent strength of schedule adjustment.

After that, the same method mentioned above at the inner continent level is applied at the world level, taking the average worldwide strength of schedule divided by the average rank of opponents faced minus 100 percent.

After all of that, we reach the final rating for each country, which is:

Final Rating = xGDiff per match + transfer value adjustment + inner continent strength of schedule adjustment + FIFA coefficient + world strength of schedule adjustment.

TAN World Soccer Ranking