or some years now, world football has had different rankings to measure the performance of national teams, teams or competitions. From the FIFA Ranking to the particular ranking of each confederation, we can know, each one with its own criteria, where each club, league or national team stands in comparison with its competitors. One of these rankings, which has emerged more recently but has been around long enough to see how it has evolved, is the ELO Ranking.
This ranking follows a chess-derived method used to measure the level based on all the matches in each tournament and their crossings in international competitions. In the chaos that concerns us, Driblab elaborates its own ELO Ranking, with its own variables, in order to be able to measure which leagues are the strongest and how they evolve according to their international and local results.
It is interesting to check it regularly because it tells us how a championship is growing in terms of results and level, which gives us an overview of its status. We wanted to compare the valuation of each championship in the five major leagues as an approximation exercise to understand the evolution of each of the leagues, a ranking consistent with the investment power, the scope of each championship, its international results and its capacity for improvement over time.
The results are, as expected, very favourable for the Premier League, which has been in first place since the 2017.18 season, just one point ahead of the Spanish LaLiga (2259 vs 2258) and distancing itself from it year after year since then. This graph shows precisely what has been happening to Spanish football since 2010, when for almost seven years it held a hegemonic position that it has been losing until it is currently the fourth league in the ELO ranking, behind the Bundesliga and Serie A, a league that continues to climb in value and improve its European results season after season.
LaLiga's investment in transfers and economic control is having an impact on the long-term ELO Ranking, not only in favour of the Premier League but also with respect to other leagues that continue to move up the rankings. With a long season ahead, Serie A and the Bundesliga could leave the Spanish championship in fourth place.
Founded in 2017 as a consultancy, Driblab has driven innovation through data in all aspects of professional football. Thanks to a transversal model, its database collects and models statistics in all directions. From converting matches and videos into bespoke data for training academies to developing cutting-edge technology, helping clubs, federations and representative agencies in talent scouting and transfer markets. Driblab’s smart data is used by clubs all over the world, with success stories such as Dinamo Zagreb, Real Betis and Girondins Bordeaux among others. Here you can find out more about how we work and what we offer.
