The World Football Elo Ratings (Elo is 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 more prevalent FIFA World Rankings, which is the rating system used by FIFA, the international governing body of football. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Backronym and Apronym (Discuss) Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and ABC, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. ... A player (wearing the red kit) has penetrated the defence (in the white kit) and is taking a shot at goal. ... Chess Go The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess and Go. ... The International Federation of Football Association (French: ), commonly known by its acronym, FIFA, is the international governing body of association football. ... A player (wearing the red kit) has penetrated the defence (in the white kit) and is taking a shot at goal. ...

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. The FIFA Womens World Rankings for football (soccer) were introduced in July 2003 as a follow-on to the existing FIFA World Rankings for men. ... The FIFA World Rankings is a ranking system for mens national teams in football (soccer). ...

Top 40 ranking

Current table, as of September 12, 2007, of the World Football Elo rankings, compiled by the World Football Elo Ratings web site based on data provided by Advanced Satellite Consulting. is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...

Elo rank Nation Points FIFA rank 1  Brazil 2071 1 2  France 2002 4 3  Argentina 1997 2 4  Germany 1992 5 5  Italy 1988 3 6  Netherlands 1967 7 7  England 1929 12 8  Spain 1890 8 9  Mexico 1887 11 10  Croatia 1879 6 11  Romania 1877 13 12  Portugal 1855 10 13  Czech Republic 1844 9 14  Denmark 1832 30 15  Switzerland 1806 45 16  Uruguay 1796 21 17  Sweden 1795 19 18  Turkey 1794 22 19  Colombia 1778 31 20  Scotland 1767 23

Elo rank Nation Points FIFA rank 20  Iran 1767 44 22  Côte d'Ivoire 1765 28 23  Greece 1761 14 24  Ukraine 1756 15 25  Russia 1754 24 26  Republic of Ireland 1753 37 27  Poland 1750 20 28  Paraguay 1748 31 29  Ghana 1747 43 30  Norway 1741 35 31  Japan 1737 41 32  Nigeria 1736 26 33  Cameroon 1728 16 33  USA 1728 17 33  Chile 1728 47 36  Bulgaria 1719 29 37  Serbia 1718 18 38  Australia 1703 49 39  Egypt 1698 40 40  Saudi Arabia 1694 51

Asia: AFC  Africa: CAF  North America: CONCACAF  South America: CONMEBOL  Oceania: OFC  Europe: UEFA  Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Argentina. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Germany. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Italy. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Netherlands. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_England. ... First international  Scotland 0 - 0 England (Partick, Scotland; 30 November 1872) Biggest win  Ireland 0 - 13 England (Belfast, Ireland; 18 February 1882) Biggest defeat  Hungary 7 - 1 England (Budapest, Hungary; 23 May 1954) World Cup Appearances 12 (First in 1950) Best result Winners, 1966 European Championship Appearances 7 (First in... Image File history File links Flag_of_Spain. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Mexico. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Croatia. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Romania. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Portugal. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Denmark. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Switzerland. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Uruguay. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Sweden. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Turkey. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Colombia. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Scotland. ... First international Scotland 0–0 England  (Partick, Scotland; 30 November 1872) Biggest win Scotland 11–0 Ireland  (Glasgow, Scotland; 23 February 1901) Biggest defeat  Uruguay 7–0 Scotland (Basel, Switzerland; 19 June 1954) World Cup Appearances 8 (First in 1954) Best result Round 1, all European Championship Appearances 2 (First... Image File history File links Flag_of_Iran. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Cote_d'Ivoire. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Greece. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Ukraine. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Russia. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Ireland. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Poland. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Paraguay. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Ghana. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Norway. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Japan. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Nigeria. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Cameroon. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Chile. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Bulgaria. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Serbia. ... First international Brazil 2 - 0 Yugoslavia (Porto Alegre, Brazil; 23 December 1994) First international as Serbia and Montenegro Serbia and Montenegro 2 - 2 Azerbaijan (Podgorica, SCG; 12 February 2003) First international as Serbia Czech Republic 1 - 3 Serbia (Uherské HradiÅ¡tÄ›, Czech Republic; 16 August 2006) Biggest win Faroe Islands... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Egypt. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Saudi_Arabia. ... The 46 member Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is the governing body of football in Asia, excluding Cyprus and Israel but including Australia. ... The 53 member CAF (Confederation of African Football) , (French : Confédération Africaine de Football) , (Arabic : الإتحاد الأفريقى لكرة القدم) represents international football in Africa, and organises the African Cup of Nations, CAF Confederation Cup and the African Champions League. ... CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) is the continent-wide governing body for association football in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. ... CONMEBOL or CSF (CONfederación SudaMEricana de FútBOL, South American Football Confederation) is the governing body of football in most of South America. ... OFC is a TLA that may stand for: Oakland Fitness Council Objective force capabilities Oceania Football Confederation Offshore financial center Olayan Financing Company (Saudia Arabia) Ontario Fitness Council Open fiber control Open File Connection (Legato Systems) Open Financial Connectivity Optical fiber communication Optical Fiber Conference Optical fiber coupler Oregon Fishing... The Union Européenne de Football Association or Union of European Football Associations in English, almost always referred to by the acronym UEFA (pronounced (you-AY-fuh) or (oo-Ay-fuh) or ), is the administrative and controlling body for European football. ...

Top 10 since 1970

The following is a list of the national teams with the highest average Elo score from Jan 1, 1970 to Sep 1, 2007. For a top 50, and top 20 lists per decade since the 1950s, see Strongest Football Nations by Elo Ratings The following is a list of national football teams ranked by their average Elo score since Jan 1, 1970. ...

Rank	Country	Average Elo rating
1	Brazil	2004.1
2	Germany[1]	1972.2
3	Italy	1926.0
4	England	1921.9
5	Netherlands	1909.3
6	Argentina	1892.9
7	France	1886.2
8	Spain	1880.3
9	USSR[2]	1857.8
10	Czechoslovakia[3]	1844.7

1. ^ Germany was also called "West Germany" from 1949-1990
2. ^ Includes the record of Russia
3. ^ Includes the record of the Czech Republic

Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Germany. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Italy. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_England. ... First international  Scotland 0 - 0 England (Partick, Scotland; 30 November 1872) Biggest win  Ireland 0 - 13 England (Belfast, Ireland; 18 February 1882) Biggest defeat  Hungary 7 - 1 England (Budapest, Hungary; 23 May 1954) World Cup Appearances 12 (First in 1950) Best result Winners, 1966 European Championship Appearances 7 (First in... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Netherlands. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Argentina. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Spain. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Czechoslovakia. ...

List of number one teams

The following is the list of nations who have achieved the number one position on the World Football Elo Ratings since 2000:

Start Date	Nation	# of days
June 28, 2000	France	708
June 06, 2002	Argentina	1
June 07, 2002	France	4
June 11, 2002	Netherlands	1
June 12, 2002	Spain	4
June 16, 2002	Netherlands	5
June 21, 2002	Brazil	351
June 07, 2003	Netherlands	4
June 11, 2003	Brazil	8
June 19, 2003	Netherlands	83
September 10, 2003	France	291
June 27, 2004	Czech Republic	4
July 01, 2004	France	10
July 11, 2004	Brazil	3
July 14, 2004	France	35
August 18, 2004	Argentina	290
June 04, 2005	Czech Republic	4
June 08, 2005	Argentina	21
June 29, 2005	Brazil	102
October 09, 2005	Netherlands	3
October 12, 2005	Brazil	265
July 04, 2006	Italy	43
August 16, 2006	France	52
October 07, 2006	Brazil	122
February 06, 2007	France	1
February 07, 2007	Brazil	140
June 27, 2007	France	14
July 11, 2007	Argentina	4
July 15, 2007	Brazil	-

Complete list since 1872: see World Football Elo Ratings leaders. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Argentina. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Netherlands. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Spain. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Netherlands. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Netherlands. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Netherlands. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Argentina. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Czech_Republic. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Argentina. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Netherlands. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Italy. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Argentina. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Brazil. ... The following is the list of nations that would have held the number one position on the World Football Elo Ratings since the first international match in 1872. ...

History

This system, developed by Hungarian mathematician Dr. Árpád Élő, is used by FIDE, the international chess federation, to rate chess 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. . Árpád Élő (1903-1992) is the creator of the ELO rating system. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... For other uses, see Chess (disambiguation). ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ... A player (wearing the red kit) has penetrated the defence (in the white kit) and is taking a shot at goal. ...

Overview

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
• World Cup and Continental championship qualifiers
• All other tournaments
• Friendly matches

A large difference here is that FIFA ranks the Confederations Cup third highest while the Elo system ranks it fifth (treating Continental and World Cup qualifiers separately for the purposes of comparison, because FIFA does) For the club competition, see FIFA Club World Cup. ... There are 5 football continental championships, they are contested between football teams, one senior team reprasentative of each country, against other countries in their continent, for the title. ... The FIFA Confederations Cup is a football tournament for national teams, held every four years by FIFA. It is contested by the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships (CAF, CONMEBOL, UEFA, AFC, OFC, CONCACAF), along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country, to bring...

These 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. Match data are primarily from International Football 1872 - Present web site.

Basic calculation principles

The basic principle behind the Elo ratings is only in its simplest form, similar to that of a league, unlike the FIFA tables who effectively run their table as a normal league table, but with weightings to take into account the other factors, the Elo system has its one formula which takes into account the factors mentioned above. There is no first step as in the FIFA system where a team immediately receives points for the result, there is just one calculation in the Elo system.

The ratings are based on the following formulas:

R_n = R_o + KG(W − W_e)

or

P = KG(W − W_e)

Where;

Status of match

The status of the match is incorporated by the use of a weight constant. The weight is a constant regarding the "weight" or importance of a match, defined by which tournament the match is in, they are as follows;

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

If the game is won by three or more goals

• Where N is the goal difference

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).

Expected result of match

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

where dr equals the difference in ratings plus 100 points for a team playing at home. 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

The same examples have been used on the FIFA World Rankings for a fair comparison. Some actual examples should help to make the methods of calculation clear. In this instance it is assumed that three teams of different strengths are involved in a small friendly tournament on neutral territory.

Before the tournament the three teams have the following point totals.

Thus, team A is by some distance the highest ranked of the three: The following table shows the points allocations based on three possible outcomes of the match between the strongest team A, and the somewhat weaker team B:

Example 1

Team A versus Team B (Team A stronger than Team B)

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.

See also

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

The FIFA Womens World Rankings for football (soccer) were introduced in July 2003 as a follow-on to the existing FIFA World Rankings for men. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... The Aggregated Football World Ranking-List is an alternative Ranking-System for mens national teams in football (soccer). ... Chess Go The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess and Go. ... The Unofficial Football World Championships (UFWC) is a way of calculating the worlds best football team, using a knock-out title system similar to that used in boxing and wrestling. ...

External links

• World Football Elo ratings
• How the rankings are calculated

International football v • d • e
FIFA | World Cup | Confederations Cup | U-20 World Cup | U-17 World Cup | Olympics | Asian Games | All-Africa Games | Pan American Games | Island Games | World Rankings | Player of the Year | Teams | Codes A player (wearing the red kit) has penetrated the defence (in the white kit) and is taking a shot at goal. ... The International Federation of Football Association (French: ), commonly known by its acronym, FIFA, is the international governing body of association football. ... For the club competition, see FIFA Club World Cup. ... The FIFA Confederations Cup is a football tournament for national teams, held every four years by FIFA. It is contested by the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships (CAF, CONMEBOL, UEFA, AFC, OFC, CONCACAF), along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country, to bring... The FIFA U-20 World Cup, is the world championship of football for male players under the age of 20 and is organized by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). ... The FIFA U-17 World Cup, formerly the FIFA U-17 World Championship and before the FIFA U-16 World Championship, is the world championship of football for male players under the age of 17 and is organized by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Football (soccer) was an Asian Games sport since the 1951 edition. ... The football (soccer) tournament was held at the every edition of All-Africa Games since 1965. ... A mens football (soccer) tournament is held at every Pan American Games since the first edition of the multi-sports event in 1951, a womens tournament was only added in 1999. ... Football has been held since 1989 at the Island Games as a mens competition sport. ... The FIFA World Rankings is a ranking system for mens national teams in football (soccer). ... The FIFA World Player of the Year is a football award given annually to the male and female player who are thought to be the best in the world, based on votes by coaches and captains of international teams. ... This is a list of the mens national football (soccer) teams in the world. ... FIFA assigns a three-letter code (dubbed FIFA Trigramme) to each of its member and non-member countries. ...
Asia: AFC – Asian Cup      Africa: CAF – African Cup of Nations      North America: CONCACAF – Gold Cup      South America: CONMEBOL – Copa América      Oceania: OFC – Nations Cup      Europe: UEFA – European Championship      Non-FIFA: NF-Board – VIVA World Cup