Talk:World Football Elo Ratings/Archive 1

ELO RAnkings are wrong for Irish Team
All results of the Ireland team prior to partition of Ireland(The split of Northern and Southern Ireland)are included in the modern day Republic of Ireland team, whereas they should be included in the Northern Ireland team as they are natural succesor to the All-Ireland team.--Ifcp1 20:00, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a reasonable argument, but Wikipedia is not the place to make it. You should raise this issue with the Elo ratings site maintainers. If it's changed there, Wikipedia will reflect the change, of course. Otherwise the most that Wikipedia could do would be to add a note about that concern, so long as it's reasonably sourced. Wantok (toktok) 01:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That would depend, if the ELO ratings were derived from a governing body, you would be corret. However if the ELO ratings are derived from a formula, and the formula has been misapplied, then it is an issue on which WP can act without breaching WP:OR. Fasach Nua (talk) 14:15, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * In practice it just does not matter at all if you just regard today's ratings. Assuming that there really is a rating that correctly gives a team's strength (at a given time), then the rating will converge towards it and is self correcting for mistakes, so if both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland played, let's say, 50 games after said event, their respective ELO ratings would not differ much anymore from the ones they would have if they had had a different starting rating. So todays ratings are as correct as if it were the other way round, only the ratings of the time immediately afterwards the split up would be messed.
 * "Just applying the correct data to the formula" is a bit of a stretch, though, since this data and the program calculating it are not as a compact block in the public domain, so first you need to collect all of the data, write a small programme working with it, and then pass the data through - just to find out (see last paragraph) that it hardly changes anything. --Ulkomaalainen (talk) 08:45, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes i had contacted ELO to inform them of their inaccuracies, however they have not replyed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ifcp1 (talk • contribs) 01:17, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Number of goals
In the current system the value of all goals exceeding the difference with more then three are the same. This doesn't seem fair to me. To my opinion a more fair formula for the goal difference index G would be (N is the goal difference; N > 0):

G = 2 - 21-N

Table of examples:

In this formula the value of every extra goal decreases and the maximum multiplication value by extra goals is 2 instead of infinite as with the current formula. Otto 10:43, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Your point is fair, the system is flawed, but I don't think Elo are concerned with preparing the formula for the eventuality of dealing with an infinite amount of goals ;-). Philc  TECI 00:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

If the goal difference is two, then you are multiplying by zero overall.


 * No, if you read the article, if the goal difference is two, you mulitply by $$\frac{3}{2}$$. Philc  TECI 10:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I corrected the formula and added a table. The formula should now work for N>0. Otto 07:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This article is hardly the proper forum to promote such a change. At any rate, it hardly seems fair that a team winning by a large margin would be limited to a double point gain.  While such high scores are uncommon, they are certainly possible against lower-ranked teams.--BassoProfundo 17:26, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Page Move
I think we should move the page to "World Football Elo Ratings" in accoradance with their website anyone opposed or have any points to make? Philc TECI 12:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems to me a good idea. Otto 15:45, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

how do you use the graph?
Pardon me if I'm a little slow, but how do you utilise the graph to extrapolate the expected result?
 * Ok well its annoyingly difficult ot describe but if the teams ratings are equal (i.e. diffrence = 0) then you read of from 0.5, and you get 0.5 so both teams get a We, and if the differences are 800 (the maximum) then you read off from 0.99, and the other team gets 0.10. all of the other results are spaced evenly between these two boundries (0.5 and 0.99) or below 0.5 for negative difference (i.e. the lower ranked team).

here are some examples.

Sample Winning Expectancies Diff  Higher  Lower 0	0.500	0.500 10	0.514	0.486 20	0.529	0.471 30	0.543	0.457 40	0.557	0.443 50	0.571	0.429 60	0.585	0.415 70	0.599	0.401 80	0.613	0.387 90	0.627	0.373 100	0.640	0.360 110	0.653	0.347 120	0.666	0.334 130	0.679	0.321 140	0.691	0.309 150	0.703	0.297 160	0.715	0.285 170	0.727	0.273 180	0.738	0.262 190	0.749	0.251 200	0.760	0.240 210	0.770	0.230 220	0.780	0.220 230	0.790	0.210 240	0.799	0.201 250	0.808	0.192 260	0.817	0.183 270	0.826	0.174 280	0.834	0.166 290	0.841	0.159 300	0.849	0.151 325	0.867	0.133 350	0.882	0.118 375	0.896	0.104 400	0.909	0.091 425	0.920	0.080 450	0.930	0.070 475	0.939	0.061 500	0.947	0.053 525	0.954	0.046 550	0.960	0.040 575	0.965	0.035 600	0.969	0.031 625	0.973	0.027 650	0.977	0.023 675	0.980	0.020 700	0.983	0.017 725	0.985	0.015 750	0.987	0.013 775	0.989	0.011 800	0.990	0.010

-- Philc TECI 18:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * But the graph was $$y=1-x$$ not $$y= \frac{1}{10^{-x/400} + 1}$$. --Henrygb 21:46, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes but if you look down the table the relation ship between the columns higher and lower is $$y=1-x$$. Philc  TECI 10:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


 * 800 is not the maximum point difference. For example, compare Brazil with Palau on the ratings page.--BassoProfundo 17:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Error in examples - loser should lose the same as the winner wins.
I might have missed something, but to me there seems to an error in the examples. The points lost by the losing team should always be the same as those gained by the winning team. At least, this is the case for all the matches I've seen at http://www.eloratings.net/. But, the tables in the examples seem to indicate different amounts for the winner and loser.

The error seems to arise because because a G value of 1 is assigned to the loser, when it should be the same as the G value of the winner, i.e. 1.5 for these examples. Rowandavies


 * Yeh your right, I just misenterpreted the system when I was wroking the tables out, feel free to change it, though I'll get round to it eventually if you don't but I've got alot infront of me right now. Philc  TECI 15:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. Rowandavies 04:35, 15 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Philc  TECI 13:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Conversation which has nothing to do with the examples shown
If the loser has to lose what the winner wins, shouldn't dr be (difference in ratings + 100) for the home team and (difference in ratings -100) for the away team? 82.155.55.83 13:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC) (User:Zé da Silva Not Logged In)


 * The examples are given as being played on neutral territory to simplify things, so home advantage is ignored when calculating dr. --Iae 15:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That was not the point. I was talking about games in which one team plays at home. Zé da Silva 19:22, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well for some reason you wrote this under a section talking about errors in the examples so I assumed you were referring to the examples. To answer your question, yes, that is what should happen. Just artificially increase the home team's points by 100 and then do what you normally would. --Iae 19:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your information. Yes, I reckon it was not the smartest thing I could do writing under an examples section when I wasn't talking about examples. It was just the winner/loser part I was looking reassurance for. Zé da Silva 21:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Which rankings should we use
http://www.eloratings.net/world.html http://www.eloratings.net/world_cup.html

Should we use the world rankings to update currently or the world cup rankings? W123 01:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC).


 * The first page linked to has the rankings pertaining to this article. BassoProfundo 17:10, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Elo Ratings Calculator?
Hey,

Can I someone create an Elo Ratings Calculator that can be used to calculate domestic ratings? For example, it would accept a text document input of something like ManU 3 Chel 1 Arse 1 Bolt 2

..and would output the overall table and the elo ratings? I know that a 3rd party magazine did this for american baseball, but I was wondering if someone was capable of programming something like this (preferably in C/C++) for other people to use...leave a message on my talk page, --Palffy 03:47, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Why not do the calculations by hand? The formula is not that complicated.  Once you get the hang of it, it should take less than a minute to calculate the new ratings after each match.


 * As the ratings work now, you would have to change the value of K to reflect domestic matches instead of internationals. You would also need a system for ranking teams as they are promoted and relegated.--BassoProfundo 14:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I could certainly work something out for the last two issues (such as taking Div 1 results into account only and only taking league matches into account--ie, no cup matches/friendlies), however, when you're plan on calculating 240+ matches/season (based on a H-A 16 team league), a program would certainly make this easier... --Palffy 21:06, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * There would still be some issues with that system; presumably you would want to keep the records continuously between seasons, but what about teams being promoted from the last season? And what happens to the ratings of teams that are relegated?
 * As for the program, I'm afraid that my knowledge of computer programming is far to limited to help you out.--BassoProfundo 02:54, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I think it would be a good first approximation to keep the ratings the same for the teams demoted from the premier league--ie, those teams would not be of interest in comparing teams (and would be kept separate from the competing teams). If the team would get promoted back to the division, it would simply retain the rating that it once had (which would be a low due to their previous poor season in the league---and would be near-equivalent to their strength level at that moment). What makes the ratings great, is that after 30 games or 1 season, the ratings would be properly calibrated for the club in question. As for clubs being promoted for the 1st time, they would start with an arbitrary ranking (comparable to those of clubs finishing near last in the league) similar to what the current elo rating has done (ie, countries start with an approximate rating and then achieve their real rating after 30 matches).


 * I could certainly try programming it myself, but my code is very inefficient and I would be unable to utilize the data effectively/efficiently that would allow me to calculate the ratings from 1000s of matches. --Palffy 03:36, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I did something like this a while back. I parsed results from RSSSF premiership overview pages using regular expressions and incorporated them into an overall table using the ELO formulae. It still needs a bit of tweaking on the parsing and UI side of things, but it does the job. And yeah, I just assigned a provisional ratings to new clubs, like you suggest. Iae 14:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You mind sharing this parser with everyone else? I tried to contact the guys who run EloRatings, and neither has responded to my requests..Quite unfortunate actually.. --Palffy 23:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, of course. I've been meaning to just finish it off for a while anyway and i've got some free time for a while so i'll try and do that over the next day or two. Also, if you give me the format the files you want parsed are in (or, even better, e-mail me an example file, we shouldn't really be discussing this on the talk page anyway) then i can add some rules to allow it to be read. the more consistent the format then the easier it is to parse. Iae 17:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * What language are you programming the parser in? It would really be upto you as to how you want to make it initially...if its a language that I already know or I can pick up easily, I should be able to modify it accordingly (ie, I haven't really decided on how I'd want the input file to look like--that is, the file will probably require comments to separate seasons for easier browsing, but otherwise, anytype of format involving the names or a 3 letter code for teams should suffice followed by a score--after thinking about it, I think this would be the best format--its most similar to the data on RSSSF which I will use afterwards with the program..Post your email on your userpage if you'd like, and we can continue this over email..cheers!

ManU 3-1 Chel Arse 1-2 Bolt

--Palffy 06:57, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I've programmed it in .net because it's what i know best. I've never actually distributed a program before so i'm not entirely sure what you'd need for it to work, but at a guess you'd need the .net framework 2.0. Also, that format looks like it would work fine, and the parser gives you an option of converting any names (e.g. ManU to Manchester United) anyway so you wouldn't be forced to keep them in the 4 letter format. By the way, one small nuance is that each season has to go in it's own file and can only contain data for one competition. That shouldn't be too much trouble but just letting you know. Oh and you can e-mail me by clicking the 'Email this user' bit in the toolbox to the left of my userpage... i don't like putting it up available to everyone. Iae 12:22, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I sent an email response as you requested =) --Palffy 20:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

At least for single play Elo coefficient calculations, the Freeware program "WorldCupRatings" should be useful: www.worldcupratings.sourceforge.net --xblop 02/08/2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.227.247.167 (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

FIFA verses ELO
I think it would be a good idea to put a side by side comparison of the top teams in Elo rating next to the top teams in the current FIFA system. Somthing like this

24.237.198.91 05:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't be against this, it could even be implemented into the main table. However, I think there should be a specific section detailing the advantages ELO rating claims to have over FIFA (as opposed to having them dotted all round the article) and vice versa, as well as mentioning about the switch in FIFA system and how it changes things. Other views? Iae 10:13, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Good idea. I've just added a 'FIFA rank' column.  A section explaining differences would also be good, and some examples comparing the two.  The examples used on the FIFA ranking page could be a starting point - or perhaps there are too many to be clear (I wrote the explanatory sections on the current FIFA system).  -- Wantok 11:30, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the main arguments for FIFA is tht they show how well the teams have played over the past couple of years, thus rewarding consistancy. and that the main argument for Elo is that it shows how well they are playing right now. and doesn't punish teams for a bad season 8 years ago. 24.237.198.91 22:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well I'd say the opposite really. ELO takes into account ALL results for a team no matter how long ago they were, a result of the rankings' chess roots where that data would be relevent. FIFA assigns as arbitrary cut-off (I believe it's 4 years in the latest version) which in a football context does make more sense. Iae 22:37, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm going to have to disagree because if someone has a bad beggining in chess (Or football) as they get better the elo system will give them points to make up that difference. 24.237.198.91 03:57, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, the models are fundamentally different in structure, in that the FIFA score is recalculated each month based on the previous 4 years' results (with the last year counting for more than the year before, etc). Thus a team's score can change significantly from one month to the next, without the team playing a game, because a match played a year ago, or 2 or 3 or 4 years ago, has dropped in value. And in the FIFA system, a team never gets negative points from a game - the only reductions are from older games losing value.  Elo points only change as a result of games played now, and a team loses points if they do worse than expected.  So the Elo points are a kind of running total that's incrementally increased or decreased based on games played now, whereas FIFA's total can only be increased by games played now, and can only be decreased by the passage of time.  The latter seems disjointed and asynchronous.  To me, Elo seems a more sensible approach.


 * Another problem I have with the FIFA system is the whole confederations-weighting thing. Arbitrary and discriminatory.  There's already a weighting based on the opposition's rank in the world; why add an additional factor to increase the points of the strong confederations and reduce the points of teams in the weaker confederations?  Very dodgy, in my book. Elo has no such nonsense. -- Wantok 06:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have the same view when it comes to the arbitrary confederation rankings, done seemingly just to keep the traditionally big national federations happy. I don't think the two models are as fundamentally different as you make out though. It's true that the only way to "lose" points is when an old result disappears behind the 4-year cut-off point but this is the same in all fixed-length ranking systems, there's no other way about it. If we're going to be comparing the two systems then we can't just go writing a list of good things about ELO. The fact FIFA doesn't include results from 1960 which have no bearing on the quality of a team today is an obvious advantage.


 * Oh, and "FIFA's total can only be increased by games played now, and can only be decreased by the passage of time." makes sense to me. Team's change considerably in the passage of time, it's a perfectly good variable to use. Iae 11:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Elo rankings more inclusive than FIFA rankings
Shouldn't there be a mention of ELO rankings including non-FIFA teams? Highest ranked non-FIFA team is Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is a member of NF-Board.

1970s
Why are bot the Strongest football nations by Elo Ratings and the Top 10 in this article caltulated since 1970?? There seams to be no reason to ignore previous years. I'm not sure how far back the available relevant information goes, but I would think it goes way back since there's a Top 20 per decade since 1950. There are coutries that are very much relegated because of this ommisions, most notably Uruguay.

Here are the 1872-2008 statistics.

--Mariano (t/c) 13:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This discussion moved to Talk:Strongest football nations by Elo Ratings -Afasmit 01:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Clutter
Someone copied the "strongest teams by decade" tables from the Strongest Football Nations by Elo Ratings page to this page. Though I (of course) agree that that is very interesting information, this page is becoming very cluttered and you have to scroll a long way to the bottom to get the Elo rating actually explained. I believe this page really should focus on the method and the current results, with links to pages showing stats. Anyone object if I remove the decade tables again? Perhaps we can prune elsewhere as well. Afasmit (talk) 04:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Website
I can't connect to the ELO website. Has anyone else managed to do this recently? Exile (talk) 20:23, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This has been a recurrent thing. I don't know what the issues are, but so far the website kept coming back. Wouldn't be good for this article and its spinoffs if the site permanently disappears. Can someone provide these people with a stable website, please ;-) Afasmit (talk) 00:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Portugal
There is any reference of Portugal team in 1966, according to numbers, on the nª3 of the ranking in that year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.138.43.229 (talk) 21:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Complete World Cup Simulation as Freeware
Based on the Elo ratings, it is also possible to calculate probabilities for a complete tournament if all future scenarios are considered. I've written the program "World Cup Ratings 2010" based on OpenOffice.org that performs the mentioned calculations for the World Cup 2010 and published it as freeware. It can be downloaded here, for example: http://www.file-upload.net/download-2455021/WorldCupRatings2010v1.0.zip.html All scenarios possible in the future (they're a lot) are taken into account. After each play, updates are possible. I've compared the results with predictions of several banks and with odd quotas and found big similarities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.150.82.181 (talk) 18:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is it appropriate to advertise software through a talk page like this? BassoProfundo (talk) 20:14, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Updating for 2010 World Cup matches
There are some problems waiting for the elo website to release new ratings after WC matches. While the formula does allow us to calculate results, it does not mean we should. Our object should ONLY be to update the ratings as the website does, otherwise it is original research per WP:OR. Note that this is only a problem because the speculative updates are usually wrong. Barronitaly (talk) 13:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that, because the elo score calculations are defined and deterministic, WP:OR doesn't apply. The updates are akin to adding a win to a winning streak of a sports team, a new time to the an alltime record list, or a new sale to the most expensive paintings list. We don't have to wait until an official list (which often doesn't exist) has included the data. I believe our case is covered by WP:OR. Despite our goofs, we pretty much "add numbers" as mentioned in that paragraph.
 * We do occasionally goof up (like I did yesterday weighing WC matches as 50 i.s.o. 60), but other editors catch the errors really quickly, and "Kirill", the maintainer of the website now and then fixes errors as well, which ripple throughout the database. Worse, the website can lie dormant for up to 4 weeks in a row and sometimes it isn't accessible for days. The updates at the website are currently and understandably actually far quicker than usual.
 * Be aware that if you push WP:OR too far, as many people are inclined to do, very few edits on wikipedia will eventually pass muster. Afasmit (talk) 23:45, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In retrospect I think you're probably right. So far we've been pretty good about updates.  However, there were some edits leading up to the WC (and including the first few matches, it seems) that were way off, calculating half the correct values or not adding and subtracting the same numbers.  +16 and -12 one time as I recall.  I was just trying to find a policy that would keep novice editors from jumping the gun poorly. Barronitaly (talk) 02:35, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no external source with the new Elo ratings. Updating them without a source is WP:OR. The current external source is Football rankings website. Regards. --Drime (talk) 03:54, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I support Afasmit's notion that this goes under WP:OR. The formula is public and it's possible to review calculations.Lejman (talk) 20:31, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I really think we pushed the WP:OR too far. Yes, the formula is public, but we didn't have info on Tunisia's or China's friendlies which affected the top 60's list. That's why I didn't think it was a good idea to update this on our own. Knowing the formula isn't all. We needed all variables, and we don't have them. --Drime (talk) 09:34, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Color for OFC
New Zealand's tie with Italy in June 2010 put an OFC nation on the chart. Since there wasn't an OFC nation already I picked a pastel-ish color that wasn't being used already as a temporary color. I don't know if there is a color for OFC already...is there a chart somewhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Barronitaly (talk • contribs) 02:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Confederation colours are here. Wantok (toktok) 07:22, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I notice that we aren't following confederation colors exactly for other confederations. The OFC yellow we have on the table is out of character in my opinion so I'm changing it to a paler shade. Barronitaly (talk) 00:31, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Elo site
By the way, it's been down for several days, making it difficult to verify the ratings.  Enigma msg  18:13, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well there's this but I don't know how official it is. http://www.football-rankings.info/2010/06/elo-ratings-update.html Obviously freakin Turkey or Croatia aren't leading the table as recent vandalism has shown. Pik d (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:42, 28 June 2010 (UTC).

This site is down one more time. Dark Seer (talk) 12:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Content of main table
An IP address user has replaced the main top 60 table with a top 100 table and has deleted the FIFA ranking information, perhaps because it was too much work to retrieve the remaining 40 FIFA values.
 * Do we want to keep it at 60 or move to 100? The table started as a top 10 in 2005, became a top 20 in March 2006, a top 32 and then a top 40 in July 2007, and a top 60 in March 2009. The complete table is easily accessed via the elo ranking website and we don't want to end up duplicating it. Updates also become more labor intensive the more countries are included. While for people from, say, Morocco, New Zealand, Bolivia or Austria it may be annoying not to find one's country listed at all given a top 60, the same situation now occurs for people from Haiti, Iceland, Thailand or Gambia.
 * Do we want to keep the FIFA ranking in the table? It is a bit of work once a month, but it does give a nice comparison, which is not seen at the FIFA nor at the Elo ranking site. Some arguments in favor were given above in a discussion in August 2006. Afasmit (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I would really like to get rid of the discrepancy column. As long as the FIFA ranking is listed, anyone can do his own math. Aside from that, doesn't it technically qualify as original research? Barronitaly (talk) 15:20, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed, whoever added that column didn't realize how much more "work" that added as well. By the way, I'm glad the website was updated today, after three weeks. Apparently I hadn't veered off, but there was more and more room for error and someone would bring up the original research thing soon. Afasmit (talk) 16:07, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Decimal numbers in gained points
I've just used the ELO formula to calculate how many points Portugal will gain by beating Iceland on 7th October by 1 goal of difference and came to the conclusion that 36,1950059453032104637336504162 would be earned (using the Windows Calculator). My question is: does anyone know how ELO Ratings deals with decimal numbers, since they don't seem to be mentioned on the article? Are they rounded to the nearest number (which would be 36) or it's a result of me messing up during the calculations? And even if I did mess up, is it possible that decimal points can be obtained and they're rounded to the nearest value? Tarts2 (talk) 22:09, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The gains/losses in the rating are rounded to the nearest whole number. I believe that if Portugal, playing at home, wins by 1 goal they earn 1 point (rounded down from 1.425...), if Iceland wins by 1 goal they gain 39 points (rounded up from 38.575...). When they draw, Portugal will lose 19 points (rounded up from 18.575...). In other words, Portugal is expected to win ;-) Afasmit (talk) 22:56, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Highest average score ELO error
The highest average score ELO of Spain from 1 January 1970 to 1 June 2009 of Spain is 1912.1. Since then, Spain always has been up from 2040 ELO score so... it's impossible that from 1 January 1970 to 1 July 2012 its highest average score ELO is 1901.1. Please, recalculate it. And another question, why since 1 January 1970 and not before? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.36.127.175 (talk) 19:48, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I think this entire article is a joke and should be deleted.
I think this entire article is a joke and a travesty and ridiculous nonsense. Let me explain why:

1) Some people seem to be confusing "Elo" with this actual football site. The site just implements Elo in its ratings formula. There is no such thing as a country's "Elo rating", because it can have very different ratings depending on what Elo system you're using.

2) Following on from above, there is no such thing as the "Elo rating" of a team. I could create a rating system tomorrow using Elo and it would be just as legitimate to call it the team's "Elo rating". You need to say the exact place you're getting the rating from or it's meaningless. Once again: Elo is just a mathematical tool that's used in calculating this, there is no such thing as "the Elo rating" of a country. 3) The only legitimacy, the only reason the "Football Elo Ratings" website or whatever it's called is in ANY WAY notable is because of it being mentioned in some BBC article and some other sites online randomly. Sure, this offers it some semblance of legitimacy as opposed to any other random person who makes a rating system based on Elo tomorrow, but it's not very much.

4) The way Elo system is implemented on this site is frankly a load of crap for anyone who understands international football. Friendlies are counted. Little more than that needs to be said.

5) The author/owner of the website seems to be an attention-seeking jerk. He's done a lot to try to publicize the website, in other words to unfairly push it on Wikipedia somehow being "the" place for ratings. The author will not respond to any polite criticism of the website or address any concerns about eg. counting friendlies. And in fact when the rating system was created first, friendlies used to mean a lot more.

I encourage other people to take it into their own hands to create a proper Elo ranking system for international football teams instead of relying on this (joke) site. - as demonstrated above there are all kinds of inaccuracies and mistakes. I know there has to be some great computer science buffs out there who can create a proper system, beautiful graphs, etc., like they have with Elo ratings for the Premiership. Professional-like. Not this ill-conceived crap. Anonywiki (talk) 06:36, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * You do not refer to the previous talk about deleting or not this very entry. The main reason to keep it imho is the fact that Elo rating is actually the only one used by FIFA to rate feminine soccer. ONaNcle (talk) 19:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Your suggestion was opposed by everyone last time you put it forward (one year ago), what makes you think you'll have any support now? Ubertoaster (talk) 12:12, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Why since 1 January 1970 and not before? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.36.127.175 (talk) 19:48, 2 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The full answer is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongest_football_nations_by_Elo_Ratings#Strongest_teams_since_the_mid_to_late_1960s ONaNcle (talk) 15:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Back to 60?
For many years we had a top 60. Before that there were even shorter lists. Maintaining the current standing to 100 is considerably more work, as the lower ranked countries require more editing: they tend to have scores closer together, so that there is more movement (both in Elo and FIFA) and there are more awkward-to-edit ties. Also, the full list is only a click away, while the FIFA ranking page is limited to 20 for perhaps wikipedia-policy reasons. Does anyone feel strongly about keeping the top 100? Otherwise I'll cut it back to 60. Afasmit (talk) 19:23, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Confederations are wrong in some cases
Syria is in AFC and El Salvador is in CONCACAF. Additionally, El Salvador's colors should be changed from AFC to CONCACAF colors. Armenia is in UEFA but is highlighted with the CONCACAF colors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.174.58.156 (talk) 17:45, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Full list?
User:Younis7435 extended the list to contain all countries with a minimum number of matches played (I think), partly foregoing the formatting and with made-up FIFA rankings for the bottom 110 countries. User:Pelotas reverted it and so did I. Arguments against having a full list are the maintenance costs (just try to keep up with both Elo and FIFA ranks) and, possibly, copyrights. I seem to remember a wikipedia policy that discourages or warns against copying complete lists from third party sites. Pity I can't locate it; it was not just about copyrights. At the FIFA ranking there was an argument concerning keeping that particular list down to 20 countries; a copyright issue came up, but the decision to keep the short list seems to not be based on that. Personally I like to keep our list at 60, like it was for years (see above), since the full list, often just a hair more up to date then we can keep it, is just a single click away. Afasmit (talk) 00:27, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Issues about Elo Rankings
I understand your feeling, maybe it is too much to have so much teams appeared on the table. However, I just want to compare with FIFA's football rankings, to see what is the difference between them. I am sorry to hear that the copyright's issue, I will apologized for the inconvenience of that situation.

Some of the cell colors are jacked up
Sweden and Greece at least — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.106.237.97 (talk) 19:51, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Source for the recent Elo ratings ?
On the first paragraph (Top 60 rankings), it says the table was updated thanks to some website on the 18th of June, however the website referenced does not seem to have any match record after the 1st of June, so I was wondering how the data was retrieved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TwikiO (talk • contribs) 09:17, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * please visit elo22.com, i made this site some days ago and published some messages in rec.sport.soccer newsgroup about it ==> elo22 <== Dalton Fantine (talk) 02:12, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

The World Elo Rating website reference
The reference (currently [2]) to the World Elo Rating website has two problems. It says the site is "elo.net" whereas that site doesn't exist. It might be "eloratings.net" or "www.eloratings.net". And it says "Retrieved: 2014-06-05." whereas the article says it is showing data from 25 June 2014.

(Actually, whenever I go to this website, eloratings, I get an old version!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nick Barnett (talk • contribs) 23:13, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

What is the source for the top 60 rating?
The referenced source for the top-60 table was last looked at 05 June 2014, the info in the table is current as of today? What is the source for this info? Who did the calculation? Where can I double-check it? I appreciate the work especially of User:Afasmit, but I'd still consider that original research, as it cannot be found anywhere else (or at least it is not referenced). Aside: The same could be said for most of the later sections of the article: Where did the authors take this info from? Pbro (talk) 22:58, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I've been waiting for someone to speak up, as we had complaints the last time around, and probably agree that by now I'm pushing WP:OR a bit too far. I have no idea why kirill abandons his website during each World Cup (see the discussions in June 2010 above). It's a bit of a service by now, I suppose. You can find a ranking updated to June 27 at the football-rankings.info website, though as a blog that may not be considered a reliable source. It corresponded precisely with our calculations to that point (they have Ireland off by one). Nate Silver, who is a rather noted number cruncher, somehow goofed up in his calculations up to June 28 at his 538 site, apparently ignoring the pre-WC friendlies. I suppose the technically correct thing to do is revert everything back to June 1 until kirill shows up again in a week or two, but the harm done by this page being OR will disappear at that time anyway.
 * Your aside is understandable as well. All tables are simple summaries of numbers at the source site, but strict interpretation of OR policies may find them illegal. See above discussions and the Articles for deletion discussion for some arguments for and against. Afasmit (talk) 23:28, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I really appreciate the effort that you put into maintaining this, but my main issue is that it is IMHO not transparent enough which matches are included (and with which results). Insofar the (maybe not 100% reliable) football-rankings.info page would be a nice complement to kirill's official page. Perhaps (until Kirill updates) we could refer to that source as well? Pbro (talk) 06:28, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've added a link to the football-rankings.info page. Do you want to keep the "Section OR" tag? It may attract sticklers.Afasmit (talk) 22:57, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I like it like that. Thank you!Pbro (talk) 19:27, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have a feeling that my site was used as source. elo22.com, with day by day transitions(please see my comments in another talks near this talk) . elo22-day by day Dalton Fantine (talk) 02:49, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * No, I/we hadn't seen your site yet and hadn't used it as source. I'm glad we all ended up with the same numbers though, even if that is expected if we did it right. Note that kirill often corrects old data, which results in changes in current rankings, so that there may still be some differences when he updates his site. Afasmit (talk) 05:46, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The elorankings.net website seems to have been pulled by its host. Perhaps elo22 should replace it as official source for WP Nick Barnett (talk) 09:30, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

List of number one teams
Since ELO ratings are available immediately at the end of a match, did not Germany take the number one spot from the Netherlands on 4th of July 2014 and therefore was heading the list until the end of the match between Brazil and Colombia about 4 hours later?

Based on this webpage, and the following quarter final game against France, Germany should have a rating of 2098 points after beating France, overtaking the Netherlands, who were on 2094 points, while Brazil was still "stuck" on 2082 rating points until 4 hours later.

It matters all the more since it would be the first time that Germany headed the ratings in the period since 1 Jan 2000 which is the time covered by the lists presented. 84.133.50.117 (talk) 21:58, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I would actually prefer to remove the 0-day lead of Germany from the list, as the list should take into account all results after the end of a day. Any objections? Wackelkopp (talk) 14:47, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This odd zero obviously need an explanation note but I vote keep because it's not the first time #1 spot changes while waiting a little for the other top team to play. ONaNcle (talk) 16:46, 10 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I made an algorithm to calculate the eloratings from the beginning,using eloratings.net matches, and also put recent matches, including june friendlies. :
 * You will also find there two links at the top, with relevant links. Dalton Fantine (talk) 02:09, 9 July 2014 (UTC) elo22.com :
 * I posted some messagens in the rec.sport.soccer newsgroup my posts regarding elo22.com :

13 July 2014
Where are people getting these new rankings from? According to the official website the most recent rankings are dated to 2 June 2014, so where did these new rankings come from? Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 17:07, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

The World Football Elo Rating System
I admit, this issue is not about the wiki page at all. But does anyone ever consider to question the very basics of this Elo formula? :))))

I mean these 2 rules:


 * W is the result of the game (1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw, and 0 for a loss).
 * K is then adjusted for the goal difference in the game. It is increased by half if a game is won by two goals, by 3/4 if a game is won by three goals, and by 3/4 + (N-3)/8 if the game is won by four or more goals, where N is the goal difference.

This "K" adjustment for the goal difference does not exist in classic Elo-rating, but we definitely want to take it in account, somehow. Also, main measure of Elo rating's quality is prediction rate (the difference between the actual results and the result expectations are at a minimum).

So, what if instead of those 2 rules, there will be only one, like this:


 * W is the result of the game (draw is 0.5, victory/defeat by one goal is 0.8/0.2, victory/defeat by two goals is 0.9/0.1, victory/defeat by three goals is 0.95/0.05, etc.)

I'm sure this formula will give much better prediction rate. Actually, new formula predicts not only the result, but also goal difference! For example, if team A is 400 points stronger than team B, the expected result will be "A wins by 2 goals". And A's victory by only 1 goal will reduce A's points - the result most of us expect when a very strong team finishes "only" 1:0 against outsider. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilyan (talk • contribs) 15:12, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * First of all, only thing I wonder is what the rule is for the points for new teams in thier first match, I can't find anything about that. Second, it is not our job to alternate the formula, it's our job to discribe it how it is. Perijn (talk) 04:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * That are choices the author made. Other systems are of cause possibel. -Koppapa (talk) 09:52, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Home bonus/malus
I have a question about how to calculate We, specifically how the higher winning expectancy for the home team is calculated. This is an example of how I understand this so far: A (300 pts) vs. B (500 pts.), the result will be a 1 - 0. dr for A sohuld be -200+100=-100 then, for B 200. We of A is 1/(10^(-(-100)/400)+1)=0.3599, We of B is 1/(10^(-200/400)+1)=0.7597. If we assume K=40 then A will be rewarded 26 pts and 30 pts. will be taken from B. What I don’t understand is why I can’t find a single example, neither here nor any of the actual matches on eloratings.net where there is a difference between the points taken from one team and given to the other. Or maybe I have a misunderstanding in the very beginning, that you have to both add 100 pts to the dr of the home team and substract 100 pts from the guest team. However, if my understanding is correct, maybe an appropriate example can be given on the page, if the second case is correct maybe it would be helpful to make this clearer when dr is explained. Thanks, Jonas :-D--95.90.208.183 (talk) 20:17, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * In your example, if A has -100 difference (with home bonus) then B is set to 100 (basically a 100 point malus for being the away-team). They always add up to 0. Thus poits gained always equal points lost. -Koppapa (talk) 09:54, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Timeline to replace 'List of number one teams' section?
'''World Football Elo Ratings 01 January XXXX – 31 December XXXX'''

It would be great to expand the #1 teams section to earlier decades to include the other great teams of the past century (Hungary, Soviet Union, Poland, Austria, etc) that are no longer at the top of the rankings. Adding to the existing section will eventually become too cumbersome with the frequency the top team changes during major tournaments. A timeline may be a better representation (similar to the one found on the FIFA rankings). A timeline covering multiple decades poses its own problems (e.g labeling of teams in #1 spot for less than a month), but breaking it down to single decades seems to be a good balance. I included an example spanning the 1990's In addition, each decade could have its own section where the change at the top may be linked to the game where either a team won to overtake the top spot or they lost to fall out of it. Explanations as to why the #1 team changes so frequently in June and July may be appropriate here to fill out the section. The result would also be an article less table-heavy. Spiaggia12 (talk) 22:54, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Good idea. You got my blessing, if that were needed;-) Afasmit (talk) 20:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The main issue I am running into is still the spacing of #1 teams during major summer tournaments when new #1's occur frequently. Including all teams (no matter the length of time at #1) gives you the timeline listed that spans the 2002 World Cup. Visually, there isn't an accurate representation of the length of time in the top spot. The timeline spanning the 1986 World Cup gives another option where teams are separated horizontally in addition to vertically. Seems a little too clunky still, though. A last option that isn't listed would be to set an amount of time needed in the top to be added to the timeline (e.g. 7 days, 15, days, 30 days, etc). We could either list the information in a note, or in the corresponding narrative (or both). The final seems the most logical solution, but would love suggestions. Also, would love someone to check my work to make sure I didn't miss any changes of the #1 team. Spiaggia12 (talk) 00:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Elo scores reflect past accomplishments
This may seem self-evident to most readers. A text like "Since Elo scores reflect past accomplishments, the table represents the relative strength of national teams since the mid to late 1960s." for the 1970 to now average section may therefore be deemed unnecessary emphasis. (The concept used to be reflected in the section heading even, but that was removed for stylistic reasons) However, User:Koppapa has repeatedly deleted this nota bene in both the half-century and decade averages sections because it "needs a much better source" and "elo tries to give a good current rating. there are no accomplishments or achievents in it." He may really believe that the average score for the period 1 August 2014 to 1 November 2015 for, say, the Netherlands (2004.2) and Iceland (1632.7) is a good reflection of the relative strengths of those two teams over that period and has nothing to do with the accomplishments of the teams in the years before. In that case, there may be more like him, and the note appears to have a good function. I've grown tired of re-inserting versions of it. Perhaps someone else can formulate it better. Afasmit (talk) 08:40, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
 * One of the most prominent "Elo Flag Bearers" of recent memory has been Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com (previously of the NYT and Baseball Prospectus). In a 2006 Baseball Prospectus article promoting an Elo rating system for baseball, he emphasized the self-correcting nature of Elo-based rating systems, which may be an effective approach here: "By design, the Elo Ratings are self-correcting. If your rating is low, then it’s easier to gain points, and harder to lose them, and vice versa if your rating is high. Thus, most of the ‘bias’ introduced by the season-starting rating has been squeezed out of the system by the All-Star break or so, and almost all of it by the time the next season has been completed." Obviously, differences exist between baseball seasons and international football, but the theory that informs the ratings remains constant. In my understanding of Elo type systems, they represent relative strength at the moment of any rating change and any over- or under-valuing of teams is assumed to not exist and when it does will be quickly corrected in future games, particularly in modern football where games are more frequent and games across confederations are common. In this discussion, I think it comes down to the definition of "quickly corrected" and how long that and, and more importantly, can that actually be defined with confidence. The text at question implies that corrections will be made within a 1-5 year time period. More importantly the text implies the mid to late 1960s results significantly influence the 1970s and onward ratings, which I don't think there is strong enough evidence to make that claim. More accurately, the highest average ratings give preference to the consistently great (e.g Brazil and Germany) or good (e.g Argentina, Netherlands, and England) over the teams who attain great success (e.g Uruguay and Hungary) over shorter periods. More recent examples being Chile and Colombia in the borderline great category or Ivory Coast and Croatia in the good category. Potential phrasing: "The table represents a ranking of national teams that have achieved consistently high success over the period." I'm not in love with it, as it doesn't address (among other things) examples when sporadically great teams are ranked higher or lower than consistently good ones, but it may be a more appropriate direction to go. Spiaggia12 (talk) 20:43, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

FIFA rank
Is someone who has got a time to updated fifa rank in the tabele with elo ratings? Dawid2009 (talk) 09:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
 * They are not needed here and just comlicate updating. -Koppapa (talk) 06:12, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * In this tabele there are many mistakes. Austria is not 11-th in FIFA rank, Austria is 21. Dawid2009 (talk) 13:28, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I've now fixed Austria's rank and double-checked the other 59 countries. GarethTJennings (talk) 18:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

upsets
We shouldn't set an aribitrary limit of 30 prior games. This is not shown in the source website. Also, a limit makes sense when teams start at a fixed numer of points. This is however not done with that website, italy started at 1708, germany 1684, spain 1835. Other nations at the end of the trating start as low as 500 points. so a restriction to 30 games should not applied here. -Koppapa (talk) 11:38, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Stats
These corrections are strange and probably mess up a lot of other stats on this article. How excactly are the averages by decade sourced? Is there anything on the website? If not they should probably go. -Koppapa (talk) 10:37, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently a number of matches have been added and/or deleted in the Elo Ratings database. This happens irregularly; one reason is that the database curator takes advice from some serious fans of football history on which games should be considered official matches between top level national teams. For example, the historic 3:0 upset Poland:Hungary at the 1936 Olympic Games has been scratched in this latest revision (perhaps they discovered that Hungary did not officially consider this their national team). This means that Poland suddenly continues with 84 points less (and Hungary with 84 points more) from that point on. The effects of that ripple through the entire set of national teams for decades. It would be nice if they got everything right the first time as we have to redo all tables around but that is of course not possible. I started with three, but all others are effected as well.
 * As described and defended in previous discussions (some at a now deleted separate wikipedia page) the averages are simply (score1 x days_score_held + score2 x days_score_held + ...) / (days in the decade). To me it is the most interesting and meaningful table on the page and Arpad Elo himself considered anything but averaged Elo ratings over longer periods meaningless when comparing strengths of different chess players.
 * We should merge the all-time highest rating (updated but needs checking) and all-time highest ranking (not yet updated) tables into a single sortable table. They largely contain the same data.
 * Afasmit (talk) 18:01, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Why?
Why Wikipedia has an article on a ranking done by a website, recognizing it as something "official" over other multiple websites that also use alternative rankings to FIFA ones??

http://www.weglobalfootball.com/rankings/ http://www.rankfootball.com/ etc, etc, etc...

My query not's to start a battle, but really I don't understand why articles often be quickly delete, and others are elevated to a status that is not theirs. This article I repeat, is about one ranking made by a website, if we make articles about each ranking prepared in multiple sports by multiple sites would end up no more. But, because this site is given so much importance?

The role of rankings as the FIFA Rank. is in some extent show the current power of the teams, with all the defects it may contain, it is the official rank. in charge of the Federation governing that sport. The WF Elo Ranking has the shortcoming that the current ranking of a team is determined by performances of 100 years ago. Similarly, in many cases, like in the 90's, this flaw creates a team that is First in the ranking in the middle of an unbeaten row of 33 matches, winning 2 continental cups and 2 intercontinental in that row, but lose the first place despite not losing and win every tournament during that time, going to occupy the first place a team that during that year only played 11 friendlies, of which he lost even, after surpass it in the ranking, with the team that held the first place just months before -the team in the middle of a 33 matches without know the defeat and with 4 official titles at that time, which is illogical, and especially considering the role of rankings is show the current strength of a national team.152.170.24.22 (talk) 20:30, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Why do top ratings go up over time?
Why do the ratings for the top teams increase over time? Look at the median of the top 10 teams' ratings for each decade:



(Note: I chose a median rather than the highest rating because the latter is, statistically speaking, an extreme in the distribution, and thus more likely to contain noise than a median. And I used top-10 because I wanted to look at the best teams in the world, and 10 seemed like a nice round number.)

I understand why there is "ratings inflation" in chess among the top players: New players come into the rating system, bringing in points. The points, getting exchanged every time there's a game that contributes to the ratings, eventually trickle up to the highest levels and gradually raise the ratings.

But in international football (soccer), there aren't any new teams coming in. Or hardly any -- certainly not enough to alter the ratings much. So why is the median of the top-10 increasing over time? Is there some other mechanism by which ratings inflation happens? Or have the top teams actually gotten relatively better than the average and poor teams, so they've garnered more points? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DKMell (talk • contribs) 05:34, 10 February 2017 (UTC)


 * The number of international football teams have grown signicantly from 1920 to 2017. Here's the number of teams included on Eloratings.net website from 1920 to 2010:
 * January 1st, 1920: 29 teams
 * January 1st, 1930: 63 teams
 * January 1st, 1940: 76 teams
 * January 1st, 1950: 90 teams
 * January 1st, 1960: 124 teams
 * January 1st, 1970: 158 teams
 * January 1st, 1980: 180 teams
 * January 1st, 1990: 192 teams
 * January 1st, 2000: 225 teams
 * January 1st, 2010: 230 teams
 * April 21st, 2017: 234 teams


 * So as you can see. There are 8 times more teams taken into account nowadays than there were in 1920. Here's a website where it's easy to check those figures in details: http://www.international-football.net/elo-ratings-table


 * Metropolitan (talk) 14:12, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Historical ELO ratings. Help lagartospock
I find ELO rankings before each World Cup to be very interesting. I was wondering if I could find anywhere past national teams ELO rankings. On eloratings just the current one is available, if I wanted to know f.ex. 2011 June ranking, I would have to check it country by country. On clubelo there's a time changing tool that allows you to check the ranking for a particular date, but not for national teams.

I assume you are doing your excels but maybe I can check that info easily anywhere, I just can't find it.

Since I'm a newbie, sorry if this doesn't belong here, but I would propose adding to the list all non-qualyfiers reaching ELO Top-32, so we can see who deserved to be but wasn't and compare.

One last thing, in 1998 world cup ELO pre-ranking, Nigeria appears twice (I suppose the second one is the mistake, as Costa Rica shares the same points). Sorry again if this is not the place, I didn't want to ruin all your work! Oh, and I would also like to know where did you get EUSKAL HERRIA, CATALUNYA and GALICIA elo points, since I'm from the Basque country. Thank you Alexmostovoi (talk) 22:35, 19 October 2017 (UTC)


 * You can check Elo ratings at any date since 1872 with the same link I posted just above:
 * http://www.international-football.net/elo-ratings-table
 * The confederations filter also takes into account the date when football associations were actually affiliated to them. So for instance Australia appears in OFC before 2006, and in AFC afterwards. Hope this helps. Metropolitan (talk) 02:53, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I found it right after writing this. Amazing website, so glad I finally found it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexmostovoi (talk • contribs) 13:14, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Lets add that reference to several relevant tables in the text. It will help to make the page look less like "original research".
 * With the site, I thought to improve some historic high and low dates and places on the national team pages. Unfortunately, I immediately ran into a discrepancy (on 27 October 1956, Poland was with 1497 points in 58th place at eloratings.net and with 1487 points in 56th place at international-football.net (the Poland team wikipedia page still had an all-time low of 55th place). I suspect international-football.net is suffering from the same frequent, unannounced revisions and improvements of old match results happening at eloratings as we have been and are not trying to keep in sync. Afasmit (talk) 19:26, 20 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm actually running international-football.net. The website is meant to use eloratings.net as core source for the games database, and to enrich them with extra contents coming from official data (FIFA or so). As such, I don't believe it necessarily deserves being used as a reference, even though it's a useful tool to find quickly data regarding Elo ratings. I should probably add an "about" page to explain this clearly.
 * Thanks Afasmit for having pointed out the data disrepancy between eloratings.net and international-football.net. I've operated a full database update which is now fully exact as on October 25th, 2017. The disrepancy could still appear again later as you've made me realize many unannounced revisions appear to be done on eloratings.net.
 * On 27 october 1956, Poland now appears to be ranked 58th with 1497 points on both websites. This leads me to a question though. There are 8 teams appearing in eloratings.net which have been temporarily defunct: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Croatia and Slovakia. Eloratings.net still rank them in its data during the whole decades when the countries didn't exist anymore. However, the 4 teams which are still defunct nowadays in eloratings.net (Saar, East Germany, North Vietnam, North Yemen) actually disappear of the ranking once dissolved. Currently, international-football.net does the exact same thing to stick to the source, however I'm wondering if I shouldn't remove the temporarily defunct teams from rankings, which would stick better to History but would generate a disrepancy between rankings on both sites.
 * I'm open to all advices on that point. Metropolitan (talk) 13:31, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Alright, I've finally decided to remove defunct teams from historical rankings. As such on 27 october 1956, Poland stil appear with 1497 points, but is now ranked 55th instead of 58th. Metropolitan (talk) 20:58, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for updating! And your question doesn't seem to have an easy answer. I would agree that if a long enough period has passed, it would be better to treat the old and new national football teams as separate entities: have them disappear from the list and start from a rating that is closest to the actual strength of the new team (something you only derive a few years later;-). But what is "long enough" and does the nation have to disappear? South Africa played only 2 matches (against Rhodesia in 1977) between 1955 en 1992, but it remained a nation. Was it really the 10th to 17th best football nation during that time? Austria disappeared as a country between 1937 and 1945, holding 7th position. I'm afraid it's not an exact science. Afasmit (talk) 08:56, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Alright you convinced me. I've put them back, let's better stick to the original source. After all, people can use the FIFA membership filter if they want to check only active teams. Metropolitan (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Bit much clutter in the pre-world cup tables
Though I endorsed the inclusion of absent top 10 teams, I don't think highlighting the absent continental cup winners is helpful, while the chosen color draws too much attention to absent teams in general; the absence of Tahiti was not the most memorable aspect of the 2014 World Cup. For the 2018 World Cup, the top 26 teams are listed, except #11 Netherlands, which in June could very well be Italy. Either team's absence is more notable than, say, that of New Zealand. The withdrawal of India in 1950 is also somewhat spurious to report°, as their withdrawal was only possible because a number of other countries had withdrawn before them. Afasmit (talk) 22:14, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

First match
I'm interested in, how are set points for the first ever match of a national team? Why did e.g. England have at the beginning (1872) 1800 points, Poland (1921) 1600 points and South Sudan (2011) 1300 points? --Kamilhrub (talk) 13:14, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps someone else knows better, but the initial ratings do not seem calculated but may have been arbitrarily set by Bob Runyan and Kirill, as they are unexplained, always a multiple of hundred, and often a bit off. For example, Bolivia starts in 1926 with a rating of 1500. They lose all 9 games before 1938 with an average of 6:1, to the greatest benefit of their first opponent Chile who with a rating of 1350 beats them 7:0. It takes Bolivia until 1957 to reach their initial rating again. They probably were not a 1500 team in 1926. On the other hand, Spain debuts at the Olympic Games in 1920 with a rating of 1800, wins 9 of their first 10 games and stays above 1800 until 1954. They probably were more than an 1800 team to start with.
 * For chess, FIDE has rules (Rule 8.2 Determining the Rating 'Ru' in a given event of a previously unrated player) that unfortunately don't work well for football teams (e.g. in this case Bolivia would have remained unrated until 1938). It would be nice if there were a mathematical formula to establish an optimal starting rating, e.g. one to minimize the point exchange for all matches in the database (it would be finalized when the team has played 25-30 matches). Of course, that might be tricky and a bit opaque. Afasmit (talk) 03:08, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this insight Afasmit. I've actually calculated once the impact on Eloratings when we modifiy the initial rating, using Kirill's formula. From memory, it turned out that after 40 to 50 games, the initial rating (no matter if it is 0 or 2000) had no impact on the current score of the team, because figures are rounded to the nearest integer, and variations become lower than the integer.
 * Considering most FIFA affiliated teams have now played more than 200 games, we can consider initial ratings to be irrelevant to the current scores of teams. However, regarding historical data, Kirill already stated that Elo ratings for teams having played less than 40 games can only be considered provisionnal.
 * For what it's worth, that's the reason as well why it is so difficult to find out when Kirill makes updates for historical games, generally played very long ago. In most cases, their addition doesn't have any impact at all on the current Elo ratings. Metropolitan (talk) 15:44, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * To answer to Afasmit's question: "It would be nice if there were a mathematical formula to establish an optimal starting rating, e.g. one to minimize the point exchange for all matches in the database (it would be finalized when the team has played 25-30 matches)". Considering we mostly deal with historical data, an idea could be to revert the process, what I mean is that we take the 50 first games backwards and check what score it gives in the end to the initial game. I haven't tested it but the result may look interesting. Metropolitan (talk) 15:53, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I like that idea, Metropolitan! If one does this for the first 50 games of Bolivia and Spain, with all other teams kept at the existing rating, you get a starting rating of 1329 for Bolivia and 1927 for Spain. These numbers are quite wrong, e.g. because the opposing team's rating is partially based on the result of the match for which a point exchange is calculated. Still, the ratings are closer to expectations than the 1500 and 1800 the eloratings site has used. Could you do the whole database in reverse time? Perhaps you can convince Kyrill to follow suite. I think the impact on historical ratings and rankings can be quite dramatic. Afasmit (talk) 07:56, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Expected Result
In the section describing the expected result, it says "where dr equals the difference in ratings (add 100 points for the home team). 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." - however, this sample if including 100pts for home teams (as per the brackets), is not correct. The expected results are only correct if you exclude the home teams points. Perhaps, a new line just giving the expected results of neutral venue and then home venue?John arneVN (talk) 07:09, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Reorganise?
It seems to me sections: #History, #Overview, #Basic calculation principles, should be related in primary part of article (1,2,3 sections) no as addition (9, 10, 11 sections). Overview certainly is more important than various informations in 1-8 sections. Dawid2009 (talk) 10:17, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm glad we agree on this. Did you mean to attach this remark to the discussion just above? What is your opinion on my other suggestions? Afasmit (talk) 18:47, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Suggestions for trimming and tidying
A few weeks ago all tables but the current rankings were removed after a brief exchange at the WikiProject Football discussion page (look for "World Football Elo Ratings" in the archives if it is gone by now). After a reply, I reverted the deletions, but it may be good to do some clean-up, as there was some valid argument of cruft building up (as if our text is code...). May I suggest the following:
 * The explanation of the ratings probably should come right after the current standings. Better still, the current standings can be in one long column on the right site, as is e.g. done for the FIFA ranking.
 * I'm okay with reducing the current standing to the top 50, 60 or 75, avoiding the explanations for teams like Northern Cyprus (17 matches so far), Kosovo (27) and Kurdistan (4) and reducing the length of that table on the right. The FIFA ranking only goes to 20, though that seems unnecessarily Spartan.
 * Spiaggia12 (perhaps not an active WP editor anymore) suggested and created a timeline for #1 teams, as is done for the FIFA rankings site (see the archive page). It gives a better impression and takes less space, though there are some drawbacks to it: 1) the timeline is much, much longer than the FIFA timeline. It probably should be represented in pieces if we go for it. 2) As adjustments are made to the football Elo website, the table of #1 teams changes regularly. It is unlikely that a graph will be updated much. 3) I'm not sure how the sometimes long periods of shared number-one-ness can be displayed.
 * The "Ranking by days as leader" is specious. It gives just as much value to being #1 in a 4-way competition (the first 30 years or so) to being #1 in the current 238-way competition. Let's cut that one out.
 * The "All-time highest ranking" table has the same problem (Wales, Ireland, Trinidad & Tobago, and Guyana are good examples for that). It's mostly a duplicate of the "All-time highest ratings" table anyway. Let's merge the highest rating with years into that table and delete the ATH ranking table.
 * "The biggest point gap". Someone added a line in there once about #1 Brazil having the highest point gap over #2 Russia at one time. Turned out to be not the biggest gap, and this information is perhaps too trivial. Let's cut it.
 * The new "Top-50 highest-rated" average rating table is easy to extract from the football Elo website, where they display that unfortunately by default now. I suspect the website managers were inspired by our average tables, but, as I wrote while hiding the overall average rating table from view: there is nothing meaningful in comparing the average rating of, to given an example, Scotland between 1872 and 2018 and Montenegro between 2007 and 2018. How much chance would you give the 1912 English team (rating 2216) against the 2013 Spanish team (rating 2165)? Our very active IP 84.125.41.7 editor (who doesn't know yet that you can and are strongly encouraged to write an edit summary each time) reverted me. The word "specious" (superficially plausible, but actually wrong) comes to mind again. South Africa is ranked 23rd because of a dozen matches as a decent team it played between 1906 and 1930, Montenegro, with 88 matches under its belt is ranked 42, while Ireland (with 651 matches) is at 48 (and accidentally left out of the current table, along with East Germany and perhaps some other disappeared countries). Arpad Elo went to some length explaining that rankings over different time periods cannot be compared. Let's delete this one.
 * The other average tables have had its share of complaints (original research, lately "trivial"), but to me they are the most interesting and meaningful. Uruguay did have the best team in the 1920s, Mussolini's 1930s Italy was all about football, Hungary and Argentina were the dominant teams in the 1950s despite neither of them winning a world cup then, and England has been a good team over the last 50 years despite never making it to a World Cup final over that time. How is that trivial? The choice of rigid periods is a problem, but unless the Football Elo website starts displaying averages of moveable windows of time (not that difficult thing to do;), this has to do.
 * The "Highest rated matches" is a fun table, where you can see which unstoppable force faced what immovable object, but there may be arguments against it to entertain.
 * Currently, the website's biggest upsets is out of commission, otherwise this table is easy to defend. The current World Cup's biggest upset (Croatia:Argentina 3:0) hasn't come close to qualify for inclusion, so these are some upsets indeed
 * The Elo Ratings before each World Championship has a nice compact format and each table has now been individually sourced. I find it fascinating how weak the 1930s world cups were, with in 1930 and 1938 7 of the top 10 teams missing. Let's keep them.
 * "Elo ratings in unaffiliated football teams" I don't know why that one should be kept. The Panjab, Cascadia and Hitra teams never will be officially recognized, even if I am a proud citizen of Cascadia. Let's remove those listings.

And for some good new, we now know that the new FIFA ratings starting late in 2018 are going to be closely modeled after the Elo rating system. It took a while, but for that institute's notorious reluctance in catching up with modernity, we cannot complain. Afasmit (talk) 01:00, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree with all your suggestions, Afasmit. Even though I was the user who extended the current ranking from 60 to 100 (we all get a little overexcited from time to time), I accept that this is too much given the erroneous appearance of teams with very little games under their belt, such as the ones you mentioned. Personally I would prefer to have the FIFA Rankings column removed from the top 100 table as it's looking a bit too cluttered for my liking but I accept that it may be more relevant now than ever given FIFA's recent decision to change to an Elo format. GazThomas402 (talk) 16:42, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * There is a draft in my sandbox. Besides the above suggestions, I made the explanatory text a bit more succinct. There was a paragraph about the FIFA ranking being just some league and this one not at all which was unclear to me; I hid it for the moment. I also had some problem placing the color legend with the main table (I made it a top 80) when it floats on the right. Otherwise it looks okay I think. A graphic display of the number 1 ranked teams would really be better. Hopefully someone will get the urge to do that;-) Still to do: a line about FIFA adopting a similar system and a remark about the inclusion of non-affiliated teams, and addition of the highest reached ranking to the highest reached rating table.Afasmit (talk) 09:47, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

No Criticism?
I can not find any section that talks about the overrepresentation of the British teams on the Ranking Elo also about the no-way same thing to take a match between Germany vs San Marino in the same way to a Brazil vs Perú as example181.29.116.218 (talk) 18:25, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * With the British team overrepresentation you probably refer to the longest-at-number-one table, mostly due because the first 30 years only British teams played each other. That list is gone in the next version. The other half of your remark makes little sense as a criticism; distinguishing between such matches is precisely what the Elo method is good at. Afasmit (talk) 07:09, 3 July 2018 (UTC)