Opta Global Club Rankings: Arsenal ranks first, Bayern second, man City and PSG close behind

Opta has unveiled its global football club power ranking system, with Arsenal currently ranking first in men's football.

The Opta Power Rankings are a global team rating system that assigns a capability score between 0 and 100 to over 2,500 women's football teams and 13,500 men's football teams, where 0 represents the worst team in the world and 100 represents the best team in the world. The rankings are updated daily, currently cover 190 countries and over 600 domestic leagues, and truly achieve a global rating for men's football.

As of the latest rankings up to July 2026, Arsenal is rated as the best men's football team in the world. Each team's ranking is compared to Arsenal's 100-point benchmark, with Bayern Munich closely following with 99.96 points, and then a significant gap before other teams enter the top ten with lower scores. In women's football, the gap between the top-ranked Barcelona and second-placed Bayern Munich (95.95 points) is even larger.

In addition to simple global rankings and team comparisons, Opta Power Rankings can be applied in various scenarios. Taking the 2025-26 FA Cup as an example, by comparing the relative abilities of each team in the power rankings, it can be seen that underdog teams won 42 out of 123 matches. Macclesfield's 2-1 home victory over Premier League team Crystal Palace in the third round was the most statistically astonishing result. The two teams were five divisions apart and 5,789 places apart in the global rankings at the time, but the magic of the cup still prevailed.

From a more analytical perspective, Opta Power Rankings provide a new way to quantify the strength of opponents in a match. How many goals scored by the top scorers in Europe's top five leagues last season were against higher-ranked teams? The data shows that the intensity of the Premier League is reflected in these numbers: a high proportion of goals from Haaland and Igor Thiago were scored against teams ranked in the top 100 in the world at the time. For a fairer comparison, their goal-scoring efficiency against teams within and outside the top 100 can be compared. Despite facing strong opponents every week in the Premier League, Brentford's Igor Thiago scored 1.21 goals per 90 minutes against stronger opponents, compared to only 0.27 goals against weaker teams.

Power rankings can also be used to quickly assess young players around the world. Measuring a player's playing time is one of the most powerful indicators. The list of young players with the most playing time in teams currently ranked in the top 100 in the world in the 2025-26 season includes both familiar names and rising stars not yet widely known.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of the analytical capabilities of Opta Power Rankings. It can be used to compare the quality of different leagues, provide exchange rates for data conversion when players transfer between leagues, quantify the intensity of different Champions League groups, observe the best-performing teams each month, or track the change in a team's or league's rating over time.

Technically, the Opta Power Rankings use a model based on a hierarchical Elo rating system to measure the strength of each team through match results (and expected goals xG when available). The Elo algorithm analyzes the results of over 260,000 women's matches since 2010 and over 3.3 million men's matches since 1990, assigning a rating to each team that can be compared across leagues, countries, and continents. Note that men's and women's algorithms run independently, so their ratings are not comparable.

The system's goal is simple: after each match, both sides exchange rating points based on performance. The home team gains as many Elo points as the away team loses (and vice versa). The rating difference between two teams can be used to predict the outcome of a match. After each match, the Elo rating is updated based on winning probability and actual results.

However, the actual score does not always reflect a team's true performance. To compensate for this, the system also incorporates xG. Instead of relying solely on the actual score, a probability distribution of all possible scores is generated based on the chances created by both sides, and then the Elo change corresponding to each possible score is calculated and weighted, forming an xG-based Elo change. The final Elo adjustment is a weighted average of the traditional Elo change (based on the actual score) and the xG-based Elo change (when xG data is available), with the actual score accounting for 80% and xG for 20%. When no xG data is available, the actual score is used entirely.

Take West Ham United vs. Manchester City as an example: West Ham United drew 1-1 with Manchester City at home. Since their rating was lower than Manchester City's, they gained 4.65 Elo points according to the traditional method, while Manchester City lost 4.65 points. However, Manchester City created significantly better chances (xG 2.03 vs. 0.54), and the xG-based method reduced West Ham United's gain to 2.57 points while mitigating Manchester City's loss, more accurately reflecting the actual performance.

In the long run, the Elo rating system has a self-correcting ability. A team will continuously gain or lose ratings until its rating accurately reflects its true strength. The biggest challenge for global comparison is that some teams have almost no intersection with other leagues and countries. For this reason, the system uses a hierarchical structure to allow Elo ratings to circulate faster: a team's final Elo rating is the sum of four independent Elo ratings: the team itself, its league, its country, and its continent. The team-level Elo is adjusted after each match, while other levels are only adjusted during cross-group matches (e.g., Premier League team vs. Championship team, or England team vs. Spain team), and only the highest affected level is adjusted.

After obtaining the underlying Elo ratings, they are then transformed into a 0 to 100 power ranking through power transformation and min-max scaling, with 0 assigned to the worst team in the world and 100 assigned to the best team.

Opta Power Rankings cover the global football ecosystem, allowing for comparisons of teams from different countries or continents on a unified scale, thereby supporting decision-making. Despite the complexities and nuances that always exist when ranking nearly 13,500 teams—such as leagues without relegation, statistical outliers within leagues, domestic cup competitions, and new competitions—the system is continuously updated.

So what about Al Nassr, Cristiano Ronaldo's team? They are currently ranked 86th in the world. And Lionel Messi's Inter Miami is ranked 102nd.

AF's PC site is now live! Browse full news, comments, match details and stats on your computer. Visit: www.allfootballapp.com