How the ranking works

This is an unofficial ranking of national football teams. It is not affiliated with FIFA and is not the same thing as the official FIFA ranking. It uses only the results of the FIFA World Cup finals and gives every team points for the place it finished in each tournament.

1. Final places in a tournament

Teams of one World Cup are put in order by the stage they reached, then by matches played, points, goal difference, goals scored and wins. The first team gets 5 000 points. Each following place loses 20 points compared to the previous one, except before places 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 17 where the step is 50 points (these places are the borders between the final, semi-finals, quarter-finals and the next stages).

Points by place
PlacePointsPlacePointsPlacePointsPlacePoints
15 000 134 610 254 340 374 100
24 950 144 590 264 320 384 080
34 900 154 570 274 300 394 060
44 850 164 550 284 280 404 040
54 800 174 500 294 260 414 020
64 780 184 480 304 240 424 000
74 760 194 460 314 220 433 980
84 740 204 440 324 200 443 960
94 690 214 420 334 180 453 940
104 670 224 400 344 160 463 920
114 650 234 380 354 140 473 900
124 630 244 360 364 120 483 880

Ties. If two or more teams in one tournament have identical figures (stage reached, played, won, drawn, lost, goals for and against, points), they share the same rating points: those of the highest of the places they occupy. The next team gets the points of its own place.

2. TODAY

The current rating adds up the points of the last 4 World Cups. The newest tournament counts 100%, the previous ones 75%, 50%, 25%. Teams that did not play any of these tournaments are not listed. The table changes when a World Cup ends, not every month like the official ranking.

Example. A team won the latest tournament (5,000 points × 100%), finished 2nd in the previous one (4 950 × 75%), did not play in the third and finished 5th in the fourth (4 800 × 25%). Total: 9 913 points.

3. LEADER, CHAMPIONS, TOP ALL-TIME

LEADER shows how the top of the TODAY ranking looked after each World Cup. CHAMPIONS shows the final order of teams in every single tournament. TOP ALL-TIME adds the points of all selected tournaments together (P, W, D, L, GF, GA, GD, Pts are the sums of the World Cup finals matches) and can be sorted by any column. SFin is a weighted count of top-four finishes (1st × 5, 2nd × 4, 3rd × 3, 4th × 0.1), hR is the best place ever reached, Qnty is the number of tournaments played.

Abbreviations

P — played, W — won, D — drawn, L — lost, GF / GA / GD — goals for / against / difference, Pts — points, Conf — confederation.

Author and contacts

The idea and the site: Alexandr Stepaniuk. Questions, corrections and advertising: community in Telegram.