The league table counts points. It does not tell you that the team in sixth has won seven of its last eight while the team just above it has drawn five in a row. Our football ELO ratings are built to show that difference, for every club in Serie A, the Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1.
What is ELO?
ELO was created by the physicist Arpad Elo in the 1960s to rank chess players. When two sides meet, the winner takes rating points from the loser. How many depends on how surprising the result was: beating a stronger team earns more than beating a weaker one. A draw counts as half a win for each side, so it moves points toward the team that was expected to lose.
A fresh start every season
Every club starts each season at 1500. That keeps last season's squad out of this season's numbers, but it also means the ratings take a few matchdays to settle. Compare teams within one season, not across seasons.
How the rating moves
After every match the overall rating of both teams changes. Three things decide by how much:
- The expected result. The home team gets a head start when we work out who should win, so an away win moves more points than a home win against the same opponent.
- The surprise. An upset moves more points than a result everyone expected.
- The goal difference. A 4-0 moves more points than a 1-0, with each extra goal adding a little less than the one before.
Every change stays within fixed limits, so one freak result cannot swing a rating wildly.
The other ratings our models use
The overall rating is the one you see on the Power Rankings pages. Behind it we keep a few more numbers for every team. They are inputs to our prediction models and are not shown in the public table.
Attack and defence
After each match we compare the goals a team scored and conceded with what its attack and the opponent's defence suggested. Scoring more than expected lifts the attack rating, conceding less than expected lifts the defence rating. Keeping a clean sheet against a strong attack therefore counts for more than against a weak one.
Home and away
Some clubs are hard to beat at home and ordinary on the road. We keep a home-only and an away-only rating for each team so the models can see that split.
Momentum, form and streaks
Momentum is the average rating change over the last five matches. Form is the average points from those five matches (3 for a win, 1 for a draw). The streak counts matches unbeaten, or matches lost in a row.
ELO vs. the league table
What each one tells you
League table
- Points won so far
- Goal difference over the season
- League position
- Games played
Our ELO ratings
- How strong a team is now
- Who the results came against
- By how many goals
- Home and away, attack and defence (for our models)
- Recent form and streaks (for our models)
Take two teams level on points at the halfway mark. One has won steadily at home but not away since September. The other has been patchy at home, strong on the road and has won four in a row. The table puts them side by side. Their ELO ratings, and the home, away and form numbers behind them, will not.
How to read the Power Rankings table
Each league's Power Rankings page shows our ELO and Glicko-2 ratings side by side, so you can see where the two systems agree and where they do not:
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| ELO | The team's overall ELO rating. The table is sorted by it. |
| G2 | The team's Glicko-2 rating, a second system that also tracks how sure it is about each team. |
| RD | How uncertain the Glicko-2 rating is. Below 80 it is reliable, above 120 it is still unsettled, often after mixed results. |
| ELO± | How much the ELO rating changed on the latest matchday. |
| G2± | The same for Glicko-2. The two can move in opposite directions after the same result, because they weigh results differently. |
| Rank Δ | Glicko-2 position minus ELO position. Positive means Glicko-2 ranks the team lower than ELO does, negative means higher. |
Rank Δ is the column to watch. Near zero, both systems agree. A large gap, say 3rd by ELO and 8th by Glicko-2, usually means a team whose good results came against weaker opposition, or whose rating is still moving after a volatile run.
Note: ELO is one input among many. Football stays unpredictable, and no rating removes that.
See the ratings for Europe's top leagues
The Power Rankings pages show ELO and Glicko-2 for every club, updated after every matchday.
In short
The league table tells you what a team has collected so far. Its ELO rating tells you how strong it is now: who it has beaten, by how much and where.