IFFHS Ranks MLS as 88th in the World

[prizby]

in no particular order

EPL
La Liga
Serie A
Bundisliga
Ligue 1
Brazilian League
Portugal League
Russian League
Dutch League
Argentian League
Mexican League
Turkish League
J League
K League
Norweigen League
Danish League
MLS
Ukrainian League
Scottish League
Romanian League
Swiss League
Belgium League
A League
Egyptian League
Chilean League
Peruvian League
Paraguayan League
Uruguayan League
...
CSL

lol

[TFCRegina]

India has a pro league!?!? I did not know this.

The National Football League (NFL), I shit you not.

[sully]

League of Ireland (eire) is ranked at 55th and MLS at 88th! Wow..clearly I don't know anything.

[sully]

The classification of the best leagues of the world is made objectively without any outside influence of any sort. We follow the criteria that the level of performance of a league is reflected by the best classified teams of that league who in turn usually represent their country in international club competitions. If one looks at the football power-houses of the world, one notices that regularly 4 or 5 clubs of their leagues are always competing in continental competitions. By adding the points won in all competitions by the five best placed clubs of each league, we have the points for the country which in turn helps to establish a fair classification. It is important to note that only the yearly classification is representative, since all competitions move along the whole season and over twelve months, we have an objective view of the best. This system has been used since 1991, and it is recognized today as the most precise in rating the leagues of the world.


I see. So this ranking basically looks at the 2 or 3 best teams in a respective league and determines how good its league is by analyzing how well those teams do in their regional competitions. So a team in India might be compared with a team in Pakistan and if that team in India consistently beats that team in Pakistan then the league as a whole in India has a better ranking.

This is like comparing apples to oranges...it's not indicative of the quality of football in a league, but the quality of a few teams representative of a national league relative to their regional neighbours. I think.

[Davenport]

You're not taking that website seriously ?

Any ranking that has the Northern Ireland league above the Swiss league is having a laugh.

[TorCanSoc]

We need a UEFA Anti-Champion's League. Where each team that finishes last spot (before relegation ?) plays teams in the last spot in the other leagues. Battle for bottom table supremacy.

[Alonso]

Ok, I looked into their rankings, and there are a few problems with this:

1) That ranking is based on 2010 year to date. That means that MLS teams have had a chance to pick up points in their national league (2 for a win, 1 for a tie) but NO points in CCL since they didn't make last tourny's final rounds (9 for a win, 4.5 for a tie). Essentially, it biases the results so terribly it's essentially meaningless. If you look at the results from last year, USA was ranked 46th. Better than 88th (since there were teams that did OK in the group stages of CCL) but still a little far down for me, which brings me to my next point:

2) These rankings are based off of the weirdest formulas imaginable. Not only do they rank leagues (so if you are in england you get 4 points for a win, here 2 points for a win) which I suppose is acceptable, but they take all results from your national competitions (including leagues)! I'll let that sink in for a second. Since the national competitions count, and not just things like CCL, your league is ranked "better" if a) you have a completely unbalanced league and b) You play MORE GAMES.

Yes, that's right, see, by playing more games in your national leauge, you get more points, and move up the ladder. Seems fair right? MLS is crippled right off the start for a 30 game schedule. Want to know what would have happened in 2009 if we had played 38 games? Keeping the points/game ratio constant (with the 2/1 points used in this system MLS comes out with 425 points, enough to vault the Korean republic and take 31st place! Yep, that's right, merely by changing the number of games played in an internal league, MLS gains 82 points and 15 spots. Of course, if our league was as top heavy as the premier league, we would gain an additional 48 points and move up to tie Columbia at 27th place. And that is while being crippled by being ranked a tier 3 league (out of 4). Now, what would happen if we were ranked a tier 2 league instead? We'd gain a whopping 151 ADDITIONAL points, for a total of 624 points, which is good enough for a cosy 14th place overall. (if we were ranked top tier, it would be 757 points for 9th place overall)

So, what's my point in all of this? Just that these numbers are pretty much arbitrary, and don't rely as much on actual strength or numbers as they want you to think. By merely changing number of games played and RELATIVE strength within a league (which, in the grand scheme of things, is irrelevant), I could change USA by 19 spots. By further changing a completely arbitrary designation, I could raise it by another 13 spots. Essentially, they are completely meaningless when trying to compare leagues with different structures. That said, they are probably a pretty good approximation when comparing leagues that play the same number of games, have a similar level of disparity, and are ranked on the same tier.

^^^^ Best post in this thread. You did the homework and actually enlightened me with facts.

[Alonso]

I found Steve's research on the rankings quite insightfull. I have no idea why you are breaking his balls about this. Unless you are behind these rankings or something?

Agreed. Dude did an excellent job with his post. Blew me away that he went through all the time firstly to crunch the numbers, and secondly to post it so that it could be understood.

Thanks Steve.

[Cashcleaner]

in no particular order

EPL
La Liga
Serie A
Bundisliga
Ligue 1
Brazilian League
Portugal League
Russian League
Dutch League
Argentian League
Mexican League
Turkish League
J League
K League
Norweigen League
Danish League
MLS
Ukrainian League
Scottish League
Romanian League
Swiss League
Belgium League
A League
Egyptian League
Chilean League
Peruvian League
Paraguayan League
Uruguayan League
...
CSL

lol

For the most part, that list seems fairly accurate in my mind - at least more than the one the IFFHS released.

[LesH]

This ranking is the most useless pile of shit and waste of time to even discuss about I probably ever seen on these boards.

As for the 1 or 2 guys who said that the ranking of MLS in the 88 th place is about correct... well, we can not insult fellow forum members, because we get banned...

[Steve]

And here I assumed that it was your objection to the 88th ranking given to the MLS, or some other incorrect ranking of another league, in this year's first assessment that caused you to examine the "flawed" methodology and formulas used by the IFFHS in their attempt to compare the football leagues around the world. Silly me. Here's an idea. Instead of complaining about how wrong someone else's attempt to compare different leagues that play during different times of the year is, why don't you produce your rankings? Then everyone who cares about rankings can see how well you do and how knowledgeable you are. I'd rather just enjoy something that I find entertaining instead of relying on others to tell me whether it's worthwhile or not. To each his own...

So, sorry, what was your point again? Firstly you told me I should have just read the bottom and I could have saved myself time. When I told you that I did, and in fact that wouldn't have saved me time at all since I was referring to their general ranking criteria, you tell me that the rankings are fine, and why bother criticizing them because I don't have a better solution? Is that really how your world works? If there is a pretty substantial flaw in statistical modeling, you don't just say "no big deal, since I don't want to go through the effort of developing my own model, this one is perfect".

Of course, you are free to enjoy these standings and trust them if you want, feel free, I don't really care. I posted because there seemed to be a good number of people that didn't agree with the way the rankings were done, I merely wanted to let people know why these rankings may not seem realistic.

As to what I would do? Well, you're right that there is no real way to compare leagues around the world well, but I definitely wouldn't start with giving leagues points by anything they do in their national competitions (including leagues) since that says nothing about relative strength of the league, and only serves to introduce confounding data into your model (as I said, number of games and disparity). Essentially using those data, you gain nothing in terms of predictive power, and potentially lose a lot of accuracy because of factors that have nothing to do with anything. Of course, it would also be tough to use merely international competitions, since different countries tend to have different number of spots in international competitions. Yes, I know they are awarded based on previous performance, but then you might as well just rank based on number of spots in things like UEFA instead of having a separate system.

So, what would I do? I'd probably start with a modified Elo system which, instead of being based on points per competition, would be based solely on head to head, country to country, competitions. It would have problems as well (since with a straight Elo system you would gain as many points from beating a 4th seed from a country as a 1st seed, as well as from a secondary competition like UEFA europa league), but I think that those could be mitigated from preferentially weighting matches from later rounds, and primary competitions. Also, a system like that would probably take a few years to establish itself correctly, but wouldn't fluctuate as much year to year (and would depend on the club world cup to keep conferences at the appropriate levels, an admittedly flawed mechanism, but possibly the best possible since it's the only competitive place teams from difference conferences meet).

[VPjr]

^ This is the situation for most South American leagues. 1-3 dominant teams and a ton of ineffective sides.

Do you actually watch South American Football? That statement proves you do not.

In fact, I think that statement best reflects the current state of Scottish football, which is a league that I would rank below MLS, even with Rangers and Celtic factored in.

MLS is most certainly NOT an 88th ranked league. At the same time, it is not a top 20 league either.

More accurate would be that it falls in between 25 and 35, especially because there are plenty of 2nd divisions in Europe (and a couple in South America) that are better in terms of overall quality of play and players.

I don't personally judge a league's quality by its record in international competition alone. MLS, in all its wisdom, puts little or no emphasis on CONCACAF play, largely because they are afraid to play soccer in cold weather (early March, later in November), thus resulting in horrible fixture congestions for clubs who might qualify for those tournaments. Coupled with a pathetic lack of depth due to tiny roster sizes, you simply cant expect MLS to do well internationally.

I'm not going to waste a lot of time researching this but i would say that the following all need to be ranked ahead of MLS simply in terms of quality of play and players:

- England (Premiership and Championship, maybe even League 1)
- France (Ligue 1 and Ligue 2)
- Germany (BL1 and BL2)
- Italy (Serie A and Serie B)
- Spain (La Liga and 2nd division)
- Holland (Eredivisie 1, maybe div 2 as well)
- Denmark (1st division)
- Russian 1st division
- Czech 1st division
- Portugal's 1st division
- Turkish 1st division and maybe 2nd division
- Greek 1st division
- Norway's 1st division
- Serbian 1st division
- Croatian 1st division
- maybe Swiss 1st division (its getting much better, as is Swiss foootball in general)
- maybe Belgian 1st division (not as good as it used to be)
- Japan's J-League
- Mexican 1st and maybe even 2nd division
- Argentina's 1st and 2nd division
- Brazil's top state league and the next division below
- Colombia's top division
- Uruguay's top division
- Paraguay's 1st dvision
- Egyptian 1st division
- I'm sure I'm missing a few others.


MLS is a league on the rise but the overall quality is still pretty mediocre. It has been getting better (although it feels to me that the league took a small step backwards this year....not sure if I'm the only one who feels that way but I have seen very little to be excited about in MLS this season...maybe its because it is a world cup year).

To vault into the upper echelons (which I believe will happen over the next 15-20 years), MLS needs to:

a) get more money into the league to bring up the overall level. Its pretty simple.

b) simply roster rules and expand rosters. I'd like to see a minimum of 28 players that must be signed to a pro contract in MLS. If you have that + modified rules that allow a member of the senior academy squad to be able to move up and down on an emergency call-up basis without having to sign a pro contract, that should give MLS team the depth they need to juggle domestic league and international play.

c) invest far more heavily into professional player development rather than rely on the college system. to be a truly professional soccer club, you must have your own development system.

d) improve global scouting for import players. its nice that they bring in big names but they do a very poor job of scouting the world for talent that can bring up the overall level of the league and who can work with young domestic players to make them better....believe it or not, young players often learn as much or more from experienced teammates than they do from coaches.

e) bring up the level of the coaches....there are some good gaffers in the league but some of the stuff I see makes me scratch my head. Not enough US (and Canadian) coaches ever leave the comfy confines of home to learn from people in countries where soccer is king. that is important. if you want to be the best, you have to learn from the ones who are currently the best.