How is the Football Club World Ranking® calculated?

The points that a club can earn are directly related to its match results. See diagram below for an overview of how the points for the Football Club World Ranking are calculated.

 

• Match result points = MR

The calculation starts with the regular points that can be earned in a football match. That is 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and 0 points for a loss. In case of a penalty shoot-out the ‘winning’ team earns 2 points while the loser sticks to 1.

 

Naturally, not every match is equally important and not every country competition or confederation is equally strong. In order to express these differences, we need to ‘weigh’ them, which bring them to similar variables. We call this ‘match results conversion’.

To convert match results to World Ranking points we at The Institute of Football Coaching Statistics use the following components:

• The importance of a match = IM

• The strength of the domestic competition in relation to other domestic competitions = DCS

To determine the strength of the domestic competition we use the Confederation Coefficient Rankings. This ranking is based on the performance of clubs from a country in international cup tournaments over the last 5 years. The Confederations use the ranking to calculate the number of clubs from a country that may participate in international cup tournaments. 

For determining the strength of the domestic competition we calculate the multiplier on basis of the points that a country has earned over the last 5 years. The minimum assigned value is 0,25.

Example

• The strength of the opposing team in international matches = OTS

The Confed Coefficient Rankings are also used to determine the strength of the opposing team in international cup matches. For this calculation we use not the ranking points but the ranking position. The multiplier is found by the formula below. For OTS we assign a minimum value of 0,25.

 

 

Example

Important notice.
UEFA has the most sophisticated Confed Coefficient Rankings. The other confederations apply other forms of calculation and selection criteria. In the end to get the necessary consistency between the confederations the Institute of Football Coaching Statistics has - based on club performances in international tournaments - calculated separate Confed Coefficient Rankings for the other confederations.

• The strength of the confederation = CFS

To calculate the strength of the 6 confederations, we follow FIFA's Weighting factor of confederations. The values  are set as follows

Final calculations