Do you want to know which men's soccer league is statistically the strongest in the world? Or are you looking for an answer to whether Lionel Messi chose the tougher league between MLS and the Saudi Pro League? Opta Power Rankings can help.
Last August, as most major men's soccer leagues were about to open for the 2023-24 season, it was an ideal opportunity to assess the overall strength of those competitions using Opta Power Rankings . Under.
Well, now that most of those leagues are approaching the home straight, we Opta Analyst We felt it was time to revisit the various talking points identified at the start of the campaign.
Here, we analyze how the outlook for some leagues has changed or stayed the same from 2023 to 2024.
Europe's “top 5” leagues?
The “Top 5 Leagues of Europe'' have established themselves in everyday soccer parlance over the past 20 years or so, becoming more identified as each competition has created an economic and popularity gap between itself and the others. Now it looks like this.
While some leagues are threatening to disrupt the status quo and break into the top five as defined by the UEFA coefficient, the Opta Power Rankings suggest that for the most part, things are about as expected.
Some people might argue that the “Big 5” (also known as this particular league group) no longer exist. Because the English Premier League is actually the “big one” and the other four competitions actually pale in comparison. To economic power. And with that in mind, no one will be surprised to see England's top airline still leading the Opta Power rankings, just as it was in August.
At the time, the average team rating for the 20 Premier League clubs on a scale of 0 to 100 (0 being the lowest ranked team in the world and 100 being the highest ranked) was 87.1. Although Manchester United have since dropped out of the top 10 (20th place, rating 89.4), the league's average rating has improved to 87.3, with Manchester City (100), Liverpool (96.4) and Arsenal (94.8) all at the top. It's in 5. worldwide ranking.
Some may have been surprised to see that the German Bundesliga was ranked as the second-strongest league at the beginning of the season. However, things have changed a bit since then, with La Liga and Serie A both now surpassing it.
The Bundesliga is the only league apart from the Premier League to feature three national teams in the top 10, despite Xabi Alonso's side currently leading by 10 points. Bayern Munich (7th) is slightly ahead of Bayer Leverkusen (8th). Borussia Dortmund are a further 10 points behind Germany, but they still maintain their 10th place in the Opta Power rankings, thanks in part to their appearance in the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
Still, Germany's Darmstadt (ranked 244th, rating 76.3) is at the bottom of the top five leagues, so that probably has an effect.
So while the Bundesliga's average club rating has declined (from 85.4 to 84.1), La Liga's has improved from 84.1 to 84.8, undoubtedly helped by Real Madrid (97.1), who are second behind Man City. Similarly, the average team rating in Serie A has increased from 83.8 in August to 84.5 now, which will help Inter to be level with Madrid (97.1).
Ligue 1 remains the fifth-place league and also the one with the closest difference between the highest-rated teams (Paris Saint-Germain's 94.7) and the lowest-rated teams (Metz's 77.0) among the top five leagues. That difference of 17.7 is lower than the Premier League (21.4), Serie A (20.7), La Liga (19.6) and Bundesliga (18.0).
top 10 leagues in the world
According to the Opta Power rankings, European competitions dominate the top 10 leagues in world football, although not as much as at the beginning of the season.
In August, Brazil's Serie A was the only non-European league to break into the top 10, but Major League Soccer (MLS) has since followed suit, moving up significantly. This is also interesting in that it means MLS has emerged above Mexico's Liga MX, which could signal a change of power in that part of the world.
However, it's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that Liga MX and MLS will switch places again anytime soon. Four Mexican clubs and three MLS clubs have advanced to the quarterfinals of the CONCACAF Champions Cup, and three of the four tied teams will play head-to-head matches between teams from both competitions. In the previous round, Liga MX teams won all three games against MLS teams. Tigres defeated Orlando City 4-2 on aggregate, Monterrey defeated Cincinnati 3-1, and Pachuca dominated the Philadelphia Union with a 6-0 victory at Estadio Hidalgo.
Despite this, MLS has dropped from being considered the 29th best top league in world football to 10th. This is likely a knock-on effect of their performances throughout the competition in the 2023 League Cup, which will be contested by MLS and Liga MX teams. Last July and August. The winner was Inter Miami, and six of the eight teams that advanced to the quarterfinals were from MLS.
However, the highest-rated teams outside of Europe are not from Brazil, the United States, or Mexico. No, Saudi Arabia's Al Hilal jumped to 44th place with a rating of 86.1, placing them between Fulham and Belgium's Union Saint Giroise. Saudi Pro League leaders were recently recognized by organizations such as: Guinness World Records They defeated Al Ittihad 2-0 in the AFC Champions League, extending the world record for the most consecutive wins by a men's top-flight soccer team to 28 wins. He would have to fall another 34 places to find the next highest-rated non-European team, Mexico's Monterrey.
However, Brazilian clubs are at a disadvantage here for the time being. Palmeiras, for example, was ranked 62nd in August, the highest-rated team outside Europe, but has since fallen to 110th. This is because they compete in the Campeonato Paulista Serie A1, the local state championship in São Paulo, from January to April, and the standard of opponents is more diverse than in the national tournament, the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A. There may also be. He is ranked 9th in the Opta Power Rankings and starts his April season as well as the CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores.
Liga MX ranks as the third best league outside of Europe, with Argentina's Primera División coming in fourth and Saudi Pro League rounding out the top five in this regard.
But back to Europe. According to Opta Power rankings, Belgium's professional league has managed to maintain its position as the sixth league in the world, while Portugal's Primeira Liga has returned to seventh place after falling behind Switzerland's Super League. Ta. In August.
While most people might be inclined to think that both the Primeira Liga and the Dutch Eredivisie are among the stronger leagues than the Belgian top team, the quality of the weaker half of each competition needs to be considered . For example, Portugal's FC Porto (16th), Benfica (19th) and Sporting CP (21st) are all in the top 25 clubs in the world, while the other two clubs in the top 200 are Sporting Braga ( 59) and Vitoria. Guimarães (143); 10 of the 18 Primeira Liga clubs are ranked below 300.
Furthermore, there are fewer clubs in the Belgian top tier (16) than in the Primeira Liga (18), so naturally Belgian top 16 clubs are ranked slightly higher than purely Portuguese top 18 teams. There is a high possibility that on average. The same goes for Denmark's Superligaen, which finished in 8th place, rather than the Eredivisie, which fell completely outside the top 10. He only has 12 teams in Denmark's top tier, so his average ranking is likely to be high.
This is why it's so difficult to definitively compare different leagues, but one alternative way to simply compare averages across leagues is to look at their average rankings. only Top 10 teams in each competition. Doing this would move the Primeira Liga up to sixth place ahead of the Belgian Pro League and move the Eredivisie back into the top ten ahead of the Danish Super League.
The image below shows the team rankings of Danish clubs alongside Dutch teams, which will help you understand when it comes to the Eredivisie and Superligaen battles. Basically, the top tier in Denmark is a more level playing field and the standard quality between the top and the bottom is much closer. In the Eredivisie, on the other hand, the gap between the top and bottom is much larger, clearly influenced by the large number of clubs.
But this shouldn't be dismissed simply as a quirk of the Opta power rankings. Danish football has been an interesting breeding ground for talented young players over the past decade or so, particularly in Midtjylland, Copenhagen and Nordsjæn, with the latter partnering with the acclaimed Right to Dream Academy in Ghana. ing.
MLS vs. Saudi Pro League – The new Messi vs. Ronaldo controversy
The average rating for Major League Soccer clubs is 75.1, which is higher than the average rating for Saudi Professional League clubs of 72.0. This makes MLS the 10th strongest league among the world's top leagues, 16 places ahead of the Saudi Professional League (26th place).
According to the Opta Power rankings, Major League Soccer is extremely competitive in terms of team quality. The top two clubs in both leagues are Saudi Arabia (Al Hilal and Al Nasr), but only three of the bottom 13 teams in both leagues are from MLS (Toronto, Colorado Rapids, and San Jose Earthquakes).
Ronaldo has been claiming for the past year that the Saudi Professional League is stronger than MLS and Ligue 1. Maybe one day we'd see some sort of global Super League, pitting Saudi Arabian clubs against teams from more established or reputable competitions. We will be able to reach qualitative conclusions regarding this.
But for now, we only have power rankings. It seems there is still a path to the professional league.
Opta Power Ranking
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