Talk:World Football Elo Ratings/Archive 2

Reorganization will take place today
Without further comments to my suggestions above, I'll replace the page today with the draft. Two changes since 2 days ago: I've added some text on the forthcoming FIFA-style Elo rating. My interpretation is that it will not reflect relative strengths as well as "our" Elo rating, since no distinction is made between a 16:0 win and a draw decided by a penalty shootout. E.g. the 2014 World Cup semifinals (Brazil:Germany 1:7 and Argentina:Netherlands 0:0) would have involved approximately the same point exchange (no home field advantage either). Perhaps it's not their goal to create a relative strength ranking, but rather have a worldwide tournament (the winner takes it all). I've also expanded the highest rating table with the information of the deleted highest rank table and with the lowest rating reached. Afasmit (talk) 07:29, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Comments on the reorganization and some further suggestions
Pardon me, if I do this a little late, I am not a regular editor and I never imagined today's change to take place. Nowadays that the World Cup is on I visit the page regularly, so I noticed the changes immediately. After examining the reorganized article thoroughly, I can say that I am rather pleased with most of it.

However, I really miss the Ranking by days as leader section. I have read the argument against it, it being misleading. While I can agree with that, I still think it's part of the sport's history and at least I was well aware why England and Scotland has such a good standing on that table. It was also a good indicator to show which teams have ever managed to climb to the top. The list was short and it was easy to spot the details.

Currently the missing information could be obtained from the table under List of number one teams. I see no mention of this section when the trimming of the article was suggested which I find funny. I find the information here to be rather repetitive, for example Spain has 6 entries in 2010 alone. I believe those all should count as the same team, yet they are counted seperately, because Brazil broke their record from time to time for a few days. It's rather hard to find truly useful and entertaining information from that table. As opposed to my comments about the "Ranking by days as leader" part, I find this table to be way too long and hard to find relevant info in it. Maybe we can edit it into smaller chunks similar to the tables under "Elo Ratings before each World Championship".

So to summarize:

- I strongly recommend the Ranking by days as leader section to be reintroduced.

- I am not sure if we truly need the List of number one teams section in its current form.

Onak Proudmoore (talk) 22:03, 3 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I suggest add to tabele List of number one teams data about first match each national teams and add starting points in ranking Elo each national teams (as new two columns). For example England national team start football officall match in 19th century with 1800 rating. Some non European countries start gameplaying from: 1600, 1400 or 1200 ratings (especially non-European and non-South American countries). In paragraph about differences beetween Elo rating and FIFA rating I also suggest add information about algoritmical discrimination of non-South American and European confederations in FIFA rating system, due to fact it is main difference beetween FIFA rating and Elo Rating system(in Elo rating instead discrimination are diffrent start rating, which are also relevant to old football history). Dawid2009 (talk) 22:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)


 * This can be an interesting piece of information, but it should be put into a seperate table, not to the List of number one teams. That table only deals with the leaders of the ranking system at different dates. If I understand you correctly then your suggestion is about ALL the teams (not just the leaders) and only at the date of their first match. Onak Proudmoore (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Thinking about it more, it seems to me it should be add as new tabele (@Onak Proudmoore. In the background there is information about: Ratings for teams with fewer than 30 matches are considered provisional.. We should include a new tabele where are three data/information: date of first match, number played matches (in case when team is not playing regular and has not a lot of games, excatly, in casse when it is for example 938 we can add: +900) and ranking at first gameplay. England started gameplaying in 19th century with 1800 rating. A lot of countries with 1600 or 1400. There are some coutries sterted with 1200 or 1000 and has not a lot of games (for example teams from Oceania). This new tabele would be very valuable. If tabele: ranking by days as leader will be included again andwe have two tabeles, arguments above about delted ranking by days asa lider won't be  relevant. Dawid2009 (talk) 06:36, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * This new tabele would be very valuable also due to fact that, in Elo, initial ranking is instead the discrimination factor of confederatkions in FIFA. Dawid2009 (talk) 06:44, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I also support delte Average ratings. Dawid2009 (talk) 06:53, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Removal (or Why this doesn't go on Wikipedia)
Most of the statistics listed on the page seem to be of very limited interest except for a very limited audience. In other words, these are excessive details which do not belong in an article which should be an overview of the topic. The lack of a reliable source which reports these also means that, even if the statistics themselves may be acceptable without a source, since they would qualify as being routine arithmetic, listing all of them without a single source which comments as to why they are relevant again makes this smell like WP:FANCRUFT.

Last but not least, we must also consider WP:INDISCRIMINATE. While listing some of the statistics (like, for example, the current top-10/20/whatever ranking) would be encyclopedically interesting (for example, so that readers can compare this with the official FIFA rankings), all the other details are unneeded and of little interest to the average reader. Now, one could say that we might split these to a separate article (as suggested by WP:INDISCRIMINATE). However, that would require those particular being discussed in reliable sources, per WP:LISTN. A look at the previous AfD and a quick google search reveals little but trivial mentions - some sites do seem to use the Elo ratings discussed here but there is no "in-depth coverage" of the rating system itself. Some of the coverage is now also on the future FIFA system, so care must be taken. The only reliable source which seems to discuss this system is the scholarly article mentioned in the AfD, "A critical survey of football rating systems". Not having access to more than the first pages, I nevertheless doubt that the purpose of that article is listing statistics in the way that is done here. The source cited in the article (ref no. 2) only provides an explanation and a statistical study, but no indiscriminate statistics either. Therefore, lacking a WP:RS which provides further critical commentary, I have removed most of them. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 16:26, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * While I was on board with Afasmit's suggestions for trimming down this article, I have to agree with you that the page still had far too many tables. I imagine that most users only visit this page for the ranking itself and a few looking at how the ratings are calculated, and even then some may eventually find it a better use to visit the main site instead of this page anyway. As much as I dislike seeing other editors' hard work being undone, this page had to be cleared up. GazThomas402 (talk) 16:44, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I see. I have removed the last one. The "leaders" table could go back in the article in graphic form, as seen at Template:FIFA World Ranking leaders - this would keep it informative while avoiding it being too distracting by taking up a significant amount of space on the article. I have little experience with templates in general and I will be on vacations shortly so someone else would need to do it, but it seems the most reasonable choice. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 16:58, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * While listing some of the statistics (like, for example, the current top-10/20/whatever ranking) would be encyclopedically interesting (for example, so that readers can compare this with the official FIFA rankings) - So why do you limited 100 countries to 20 countires in tabele? List on Wikipedia look much mor clear than list on Elo's site (colours of confederations at Wikipedia article are very valuable to analize), so most of readers will be interested in list on Wikipedia. Dawid2009 (talk) 20:44, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Except that Wikipedia isn't a stats website. We need to maintain a balance between "informative" (encyclopedic) and "too much" (WP:INDISCRIMINATE). Why only top 20? As I said, that is how it is done at similar articles (i.e. the official FIFA World Ranking and the FIFA Women's World Rankings). That is a good point to start from, because it maintains consistency, which help incredibly with readability. "Most readers will be interested with the list on Wikipedia" - most readers of Wikipedia will not be interested in knowing the top 100 of a rating system which isn't even the official one. You seem to assume that everyone who reads this article will be someone who is deeply interested with the topic, which is not an assumption that should be made so readily. As for people getting the ranking from Wikipedia, I fail to see why anyone in his right mind would ever do that - if they want the latest updates, they should go directly to the original source of the rankings they seek. As I said, the purpose of Wikipedia isn't being a sports stats website. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 01:31, 5 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Pardon me, but the complete removal of the statistics hurts a lot those who are interested in the ELO ranking system, and we are really not talking only about a limited number of people. I know for sure that in the Hungarian broadcasting, even professional reporters relied a lot on these statistics. The problem is that even the official site itself doesn't list many of the statistics which you have removed, even though it can be derived from the data that's available there. The community put really hard work into it and decided to publish on Wikipedia, so it might be available to all. I don't know about any other site where some of these statistics would be available. So unless we restore them, they would be lost to many of us, unless we do the hard work and derive them from the official site again. I can understand your reasons as well, but please understand me as well, this step would really be a big blow, since many of the information is not published anywhere else. Surely, there can be another solution. Onak Proudmoore (talk) 06:02, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Then you have two options: 1. contact the owner of the official site and suggest that the various statistics which have been removed from Wikipedia be included on his site (which is where they should rightfully go) or 2. create a dedicated sub-page (ex. World Football Elo Ratings statistics) and have the stats there - as I said, I have some reservations about the second option because there doesn't seem to be enough in-depth coverage of those statistics to pass WP:LISTN, and because, as I already said, Wikipedia isn't a stats website - the statistics themselves might be useful to some, but that has never been a criterion for inclusion. As I said, per WP:INDISCRIMINATE, "To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources. (emphases added)" The three keywords here are crucial.

Put in practice, these criteria mean that all information needs to have a clear context (which is met here, since this is clearly about international football) with explanations (for example, if we were talking about the record number of penalties in the 2018 WC, an explanation that this might be caused by the use of VAR would be warranted) based on sources which are independent from the subject (in this case, that do not come from the official site - in the case of the penalties, independent from FIFA). On top of all of that, the information shouldn't be based on your own research.

Hope this clarifies that matter. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 14:28, 5 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Just a note that these changes were made but were undone; I'd support their reimplementation to some degree. Super Nintendo Chalmers (talk) 10:12, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I have now made similar but less extensive cuts Super Nintendo Chalmers (talk) 10:18, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Talk move
I've copied and pasted everything above this post from Talk:Elo Rating System for football. On 9th July 2018, Txikon moved this article to Elo Rating System for footbal, then copied and pasted the majority of the content back here. This left the page Elo Rating System for football with essentially no unique content (little more than a pargraph), which merged back into this article on the 17th July. To be honest when I did this, I had not seen that the two pages had only been recently separated. I have redirected Elo Rating System for football here and while I'm happy to have a more formal discussio of the (re)-merge, to which one editor (84.125.12.152) has objected, if people want, I note that two other editors have supported my decision by making edits to keep the pages merged.

I've copied and pasted the talk across to keep this talk content with the material to which it relates, ie, the mateiral on World Football Elo Ratings. Hope that all makes sense! Super Nintendo Chalmers (talk) 10:08, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It's a mess. How this talk page remained a redirect to "Elo Rating System for football" is a mystery to me. Anyhow, I've added the link to the archive back in. I also started a history merge request before you wrote this, but the administrator considers it a history-fork and could only put an information box on top of this talk page (see the discussion here). Afasmit (talk) 23:36, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. In all honesty I encountered them first as separate pages a week or so ago and neglected to check histories and so merged the 'rating system page' into this one. Having done that, I thought I'd look on the talk to see if anyone had raised the sheer volume of stats/tables on this page, and that was when I realized that the page had been moved to Elo Rating System for football in early July 2018, only for the majority of content to have then been copied and pasted back here.--Super Nintendo Chalmers (talk) 09:29, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Elo ratings for split countries
The page is a mess when it comes to split countries.

1. The table “All-time highest ratings” features the Soviet Union, but does not feature Russia. This is wrong, as the Russian football has quite different characteristics from the Soviet football. It is important to see the highest rating achieved by Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but we can’t do it. We can for Ukraine, though. This makes no sense.

2. The next table, “All-time highest ranking”, features Russia, but does not feature the Soviet Union. Again, this is a problem, as we can’t see the best rank achieved by Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It’s hidden from us because of the Soviet Union’s 1st rank achieved in 60s–80s. We can see the best rank for Ukraine, but not for Russia. Again, makes no sense.

These tables should feature the Soviet Union and all countries it broke into, provided they are in the top-60. Given the current data, the tables should feature the Soviet Union, Ukraine, and Russia.

The same logic should apply to Czechoslovakia → {Czechia, Slovakia} and SFR Yugoslavia → {Slovenia, Croatia, BiH, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia}. For simplicity, FR Yugoslavia’s results (1993–2006) can be merged with Serbia’s.

46.242.13.150 (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello there!
 * I understand your reasoning and you bring up some valid points. However FIFA officially considers Russia as successor to all the achievements of the Soviet Union. As far as FIFA is concerned they are the same country.
 * They also follow a policy that whenever a country splits up they consider the bigger chunk to obtain all the previous results of the former country. Thus Serbia is officially entitled to all the results of the former Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic has all the results of the former Czechoslovakia, etc. While the other newly formed countries, like Slovakia, Ukraine, Croatia, etc. start with a completely blank list of results after the countries have been split.
 * While I think it's useful to argue whether this policy is right or wrong, I also think that since this is the official standing of the governing body of football, we should reflect their standing here as well unless they officially change their mind.
 * 88.80.249.97 (talk) 13:07, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Ranking by days as leader
Ranking teams by days as leader is a bit misleading as it doesn't take into account the number of games in which such a leading position was challenged. Is it really noteworthy to be leader for "365 days" if you don't play a single game during a whole year? Should it be really considered exactly the same as if you had played 15 games over the period in still keeping your "crown"?

Ranking teams by games played as leader sounds more relevant from a sporting point of view, as it would reward teams having succesfully challenged such leading position the most.

Here is an alternative table proposal. It could be made sortable so that users could still rank it by number of days if they will. What do you think?

Metropolitan (talk) 10:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Metropolitan, the order of nations certainly seems more agreeable, probably because the impact of low activity periods like the world wars, and the 4-team competition periods of the 19th century are reduced, while recent success has more influence as the number of games played keeps going up. However, it's not so easy to defend formally and will anger the original research hounds. Do you count the initial match that resulted in becoming #1? How about if the previous #1 team looses. There are quite a few occasions where a team were #1 without playing a game in that specific period (but perhaps just the day before). Also, some teams have been #1 for long periods, with many games played, just a few points above (multiple) contenders (often only because of favorable rounding), while others spent the same time / # games played over 100 points away from contenders. That's where the average ratings over set periods give a better picture. In general, as I probably mentioned before, I think these ranked #1 lists are useless, as the site/ algorithm is for ratings and not rankings. The site's ranking order has been inconsequential (unlike the FIFA ranking), but the rating does reflect an estimate of true strength compared to other teams and is an excellent source of historical information. Afasmit (talk) 23:57, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Hey Afasmit, very insightful post. Here are some quick answers and additional informations:
 * You're indeed right to point out Elo ratings are more about ratings rather than rankings, this is very true. The thing is that there is on this page already a ranking by days as leader and I was only pointing out that the "day" approach could be misleading in a sporting context. To explain it in another way, it sounds a bit as if we would consider a table saying Italy was world champion for 24 years (because it kept its pre-ww2 title for 12 years), ending thus ahead of Brazil which was world champion only for 20 years. What matters are the number of times it was succesfully challenged, not the resting time between challenges. That was my only point.
 * You're right to point out original research, but is there an official source for the ranking by days as leader table? Both sound original research, even though that's only about making sums out of a database.
 * Number of games played as leader is very easy to compile as World Football Elo Ratings website systematically gives the ranking outcome after every single game for both participating teams. If team A is leader then team B plays another game and becomes leader instead, it has no impact for team A as what is counted here are games played by team A as leader. As a matter of fact, it's much easier to calculate the number of games played as leader than the number of days as leader (in which case the problem you mentionned indeed happens).
 * My point with this answer was only to be informative. I understood the idea was rejected and I have no intention to insist. Yours faithfully. Metropolitan (talk) 20:05, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to be sure, I think your idea could be an improvement. I'm still hoping that the overbearing "List of number one teams" can be replaced with a timeline, something like that proposed and created by in October 2015 on this page (see Archive 1). This will emphasize the teams that hang out on top for long times, and there wouldn't be a need (if there is any in the first place) for a "days at top" table.Afasmit (talk) 23:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

spain in the 1920s
I believe Spain has been left out by mistake in the average by decades section Thetrogg (talk) 13:05, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Ok i see why now but thats misleading as Spain was no 1 and possibly best European side in the 1920s Thetrogg (talk) 13:13, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about this at WT:FOOTY
Given the (previous) state of the article, a discussion at the WikiProject talk page had been initiated (with involved editors pinged and notified about it), with the conclusion that most of the (now removed) material failed WP:INDISCRIMINATE. This mirrors a previous discussion which happened on this talk page (search for it in the archives). The archived WT:FOOTY discussion can be read here. Please stop putting all the stats back in. 107.190.33.254 (talk) 18:52, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Revert to this per consensus for removal at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football/Archive_125. 107.190.33.254 (talk) 20:47, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Edit requests are not a tool to continue an edit war. Remember that edit wars have two sides - if you find yourself repeatedly accusing another editor of edit warring while reverting their edits, you're edit warring as well. I don't know enough about this subject area to perform this edit on its own merits. You were involved with this a couple of weeks ago, can you take a look at this? &#8209;&#8209; El Hef  ( Meep? ) 13:56, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I disagree that I am engaging in an edit war. I sought consensus to remove the material, and gained it at the appropriate discussion linked above. Then everything seemed to die down for a while, but a new IP (seemingly unrelated, and unaware of everything) then came in with a WP:OWN attitude ("years of hard work") and reinstated it. I added the above section about the discussion so that he could look at it before adding it back. However, that has obviously not been done and we are stuck, again, with this article full of (obviously, should I say) WP:NOTSTATS material whose only source is the ranking website itself, some of it which is also clearly WP:SYNTH (ex. "Time averaged Elo or Elo-like scores are routinely used to compare chess player strengths." -> then using it to compare football teams...). Therefore, I was reverting to the new consensus (which is rooted in policy) while other IP is desperately clinging on to what was the old (but now overridden) one (which is rather WP:FANCRUFT)... 107.190.33.254 (talk) 15:06, 15 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Please review Edit warring before you get yourself blocked. -  FlightTime  ( open channel ) 15:09, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of that. I sought consensus to remove it (at a venue where there would be participation from more experienced participants, namely the WikiProject page) - got it - removed it. Unaware IP keeps putting it back in without participating in any of the discussion (same of the registered editors who had put it back in). I advise him of it. He keeps removing it (and then claims he is reverting to status quo ante...). I'm aware of The Wrong Version, but in this case the version I reverted to is the actual consensus, and it seems so bloody obvious (especially in light of WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:OR) that I have no words for it... 107.190.33.254 (talk) 15:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I've restored a trimmed version of the article (sorry if it was the !wrong one). This was discussed at WT:FOOTY, which was an appropriate venue, and two experienced editors both weighed in with contributions to help streamline this article (myself and GiantSnowman). It seems to me like there's an IP editor who has been treating this article like some sort of pet project. Wikipedia is not one editor's plaything to do with as they wish, and there is a consensus for this article to be drastically reduced from what it was before. – PeeJay 16:23, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, I've just tried to check this page which has been always very informative as per the round of WC qualifiers for the 2022 WC started in Europe and I'm dismayed to see that there are 2 individuals (PeeJay and GiantSnowman) starting an edit war. Please stop claiming any consensus on a page WT:FOOTY which is *not* an appropriate venue (here is the appropriate venue), base on some Canadian and Australian "experienced editors". This is a page with years of life without problem and I've been personally checking say every month regularly for years. I'm nowhere near related to the Elo ratings site or the main updaters of this site, but they have been trustful and serious ever since. The Elo method is not an obscure one and I've personally been systematically impressed by the quality of the results, especially since FIFA changed their ranking some years ago to one that has given odd seedings in the world cups (like Poland in 2018 or Belgium still today). For anyone from a country with football past (ie. not Canada or Australia) the figures relate impressively to the common sense (ie. Hungary in the 50s, Argentina and Italy in the 30s before Brazil surged in the late 50s, France's dismal past and surge in the mid 80's, etc...) and allow interesting insights (like for instance how still the maximum score of Brazil is still in 1962, which makes actually sense since they were back-to-back champions - and not 1070). These are interesting and meaningful numbers. By the way the only source of the FIFA ranking is ... the FIFA site. And the WP:INDISCRIMINATE claim "link" is as ridiculous as it dates back from 2019 and consists of a rant of 2 lines... So please stop willing to impose your uninformed POV and making a "consensus" out of 2 people (against 1 ?, and now 2 at least). Actually I don't understand why this page infos bother you since 2019. 2A01:E0A:4FA:7460:3999:4717:24ED:2EE7 (talk) 00:12, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * We don't need 2 discussions about this: there's more people in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)