Man City get confidence boost to take Champions League back from Real Madrid

Manchester City have been rated the world's top football team – by a new rankings system designed to identify the best side on the planet.

Pep Guardiola's side are the undisputed kings of English football, having won the Premier League for a record-breaking four successive seasons. But the Opta Analyst Power rankings have City as the best team in world football, beating European giants Real Madrid to top spot.

Arsenal are in fourth spot, just ahead of Barcelona, with Liverpool seventh. Other Premier League clubs ranked include Chelsea and Newcastle, 19th and 20th respectively in the global rankings.

But Manchester United's fall from grace in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era is underlined by their lowly position of 28th, below Slavia Prague, Girona, PSV Eindhoven and Stuttgart.

Opta have devised a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to more than 13,000 domestic football teams, on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best.

The rankings take in more than the top European leagues in England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Portugal. They are updated daily and rank teams from 183 different FIFA member countries and 413 unique domestic leagues, providing a true global rating system in men’s football.

It means clubs from Europe can be compared to the best in Brazil and Japan, Belgium and Argentina, Switzerland and Qatar, Hungary and Ukraine and even Uruguay and Sweden, as well as clubs in the lucrative Saudi Pro League, which has attracted so many of Europe's top stars in recent seasons.