Methodology with Links
At World Club Rankings, we use a collection of data from various websites that use mathematical formulae to determine their own rankings of the best football clubs in the world. We then consolidate the data to create a consensus WCR Top 25 Clubs in the world each week.
Each of these sites appear to provide detailed, comprehensive and valid rankings. Since each uses its own methodology, however, each comes up with different results. Our methodology at WCR is very basic. We take the rankings from each site on Monday night and process them as votes. Each of these rankings receives equal weighting. WCR Points are added up as follows: For each site, a first place ranking will receive 25 points, a second place 24 points, a third place 23 points, all the way down to 25th place receiving one point. Those points will then be added up to determine the WCR Top 25 Clubs in the World. Because only three of the sites rank non-European clubs, non-European clubs will receive their total votes multiplied by 5/3 to attain an average of points from the three that include them and attribute that average to the other polls. If clubs are tied in points, those ties will be broken by determining who is ranked higher by the majority of sites.
We will add additional websites to the mix when they have been reviewed and determined to be detailed, comprehensive and valid. At the moment, the list below are the sites that we are using.
UPDATE - August 6, 2023
Due to layoffs at ABC News (or ESPN, or something like that), FiveThirtyEight no longer updates their rankings of the best football clubs in the world. As a result, their data is no longer being used in our calculations. We are looking for additional credible websites to use, but for the beginning of the 2023-24 season, we will be using only the other four sites listed above.