Talk:Elo Rating System for football

Stats

These corrections are strange and probably mess up a lot of other stats on this article. How excactly are the averages by decade sourced? Is there anything on the website? If not they should probably go. -Koppapa (talk) 10:37, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Apparently a number of matches have been added and/or deleted in the Elo Ratings database. This happens irregularly; one reason is that the database curator takes advice from some serious fans of football history on which games should be considered official matches between top level national teams. For example, the historic 3:0 upset Poland:Hungary at the 1936 Olympic Games has been scratched in this latest revision (perhaps they discovered that Hungary did not officially consider this their national team). This means that Poland suddenly continues with 84 points less (and Hungary with 84 points more) from that point on. The effects of that ripple through the entire set of national teams for decades. It would be nice if they got everything right the first time as we have to redo all tables around but that is of course not possible. I started with three, but all others are effected as well.

As described and defended in previous discussions (some at a now deleted separate wikipedia page) the averages are simply (score1 x days_score_held + score2 x days_score_held + ...) / (days in the decade). To me it is the most interesting and meaningful table on the page and Arpad Elo himself considered anything but averaged Elo ratings over longer periods meaningless when comparing strengths of different chess players.

We should merge the all-time highest rating (updated but needs checking) and all-time highest ranking (not yet updated) tables into a single sortable table. They largely contain the same data.

Afasmit (talk) 18:01, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Why?

Why Wikipedia has an article on a ranking done by a website, recognizing it as something "official" over other multiple websites that also use alternative rankings to FIFA ones??

http://www.weglobalfootball.com/rankings/ http://www.rankfootball.com/ etc, etc, etc...

My query not's to start a battle, but really I don't understand why articles often be quickly delete, and others are elevated to a status that is not theirs. This article I repeat, is about one ranking made by a website, if we make articles about each ranking prepared in multiple sports by multiple sites would end up no more. But, because this site is given so much importance?

The role of rankings as the FIFA Rank. is in some extent show the current power of the teams, with all the defects it may contain, it is the official rank. in charge of the Federation governing that sport. The WF Elo Ranking has the shortcoming that the current ranking of a team is determined by performances of 100 years ago. Similarly, in many cases, like in the 90's, this flaw creates a team that is First in the ranking in the middle of an unbeaten row of 33 matches, winning 2 continental cups and 2 intercontinental in that row, but lose the first place despite not losing and win every tournament during that time, going to occupy the first place a team that during that year only played 11 friendlies, of which he lost even, after surpass it in the ranking, with the team that held the first place just months before -the team in the middle of a 33 matches without know the defeat and with 4 official titles at that time, which is illogical, and especially considering the role of rankings is show the current strength of a national team.152.170.24.22 (talk) 20:30, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Why do top ratings go up over time?

Why do the ratings for the top teams increase over time? Look at the median of the top 10 teams' ratings for each decade:

(Note: I chose a median rather than the highest rating because the latter is, statistically speaking, an extreme in the distribution, and thus more likely to contain noise than a median. And I used top-10 because I wanted to look at the best teams in the world, and 10 seemed like a nice round number.)

I understand why there is "ratings inflation" in chess among the top players: New players come into the rating system, bringing in points. The points, getting exchanged every time there's a game that contributes to the ratings, eventually trickle up to the highest levels and gradually raise the ratings.

But in international football (soccer), there aren't any new teams coming in. Or hardly any -- certainly not enough to alter the ratings much. So why is the median of the top-10 increasing over time? Is there some other mechanism by which ratings inflation happens? Or have the top teams actually gotten relatively better than the average and poor teams, so they've garnered more points? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DKMell (talk • contribs) 05:34, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

The number of international football teams have grown signicantly from 1920 to 2017. Here's the number of teams included on Eloratings.net website from 1920 to 2010:

• January 1st, 1920: 29 teams
• January 1st, 1930: 63 teams
• January 1st, 1940: 76 teams
• January 1st, 1950: 90 teams
• January 1st, 1960: 124 teams
• January 1st, 1970: 158 teams
• January 1st, 1980: 180 teams
• January 1st, 1990: 192 teams
• January 1st, 2000: 225 teams
• January 1st, 2010: 230 teams
• April 21st, 2017: 234 teams

So as you can see. There are 8 times more teams taken into account nowadays than there were in 1920. Here's a website where it's easy to check those figures in details: http://www.international-football.net/elo-ratings-table

Metropolitan (talk) 14:12, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Historical ELO ratings. Help lagartospock

I find ELO rankings before each World Cup to be very interesting. I was wondering if I could find anywhere past national teams ELO rankings. On eloratings just the current one is available, if I wanted to know f.ex. 2011 June ranking, I would have to check it country by country. On clubelo there's a time changing tool that allows you to check the ranking for a particular date, but not for national teams.

I assume you are doing your excels but maybe I can check that info easily anywhere, I just can't find it.

Since I'm a newbie, sorry if this doesn't belong here, but I would propose adding to the list all non-qualyfiers reaching ELO Top-32, so we can see who deserved to be but wasn't and compare.

One last thing, in 1998 world cup ELO pre-ranking, Nigeria appears twice (I suppose the second one is the mistake, as Costa Rica shares the same points). Sorry again if this is not the place, I didn't want to ruin all your work! Oh, and I would also like to know where did you get EUSKAL HERRIA, CATALUNYA and GALICIA elo points, since I'm from the Basque country. Thank you Alexmostovoi (talk) 22:35, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

You can check Elo ratings at any date since 1872 with the same link I posted just above:

http://www.international-football.net/elo-ratings-table

The confederations filter also takes into account the date when football associations were actually affiliated to them. So for instance Australia appears in OFC before 2006, and in AFC afterwards. Hope this helps. Metropolitan (talk) 02:53, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I found it right after writing this. Amazing website, so glad I finally found it.

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexmostovoi (talk • contribs) 13:14, 20 October 2017 (UTC) 

Lets add that reference to several relevant tables in the text. It will help to make the page look less like "original research".

With the site, I thought to improve some historic high and low dates and places on the national team pages. Unfortunately, I immediately ran into a discrepancy (on 27 October 1956, Poland was with 1497 points in 58th place at eloratings.net and with 1487 points in 56th place at international-football.net (the Poland team wikipedia page still had an all-time low of 55th place). I suspect international-football.net is suffering from the same frequent, unannounced revisions and improvements of old match results happening at eloratings as we have been and are not trying to keep in sync. Afasmit (talk) 19:26, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm actually running international-football.net. The website is meant to use eloratings.net as core source for the games database, and to enrich them with extra contents coming from official data (FIFA or so). As such, I don't believe it necessarily deserves being used as a reference, even though it's a useful tool to find quickly data regarding Elo ratings. I should probably add an "about" page to explain this clearly.

Thanks Afasmit for having pointed out the data disrepancy between eloratings.net and international-football.net. I've operated a full database update which is now fully exact as on October 25th, 2017. The disrepancy could still appear again later as you've made me realize many unannounced revisions appear to be done on eloratings.net.

On 27 october 1956, Poland now appears to be ranked 58th with 1497 points on both websites. This leads me to a question though. There are 8 teams appearing in eloratings.net which have been temporarily defunct: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Croatia and Slovakia. Eloratings.net still rank them in its data during the whole decades when the countries didn't exist anymore. However, the 4 teams which are still defunct nowadays in eloratings.net (Saar, East Germany, North Vietnam, North Yemen) actually disappear of the ranking once dissolved. Currently, international-football.net does the exact same thing to stick to the source, however I'm wondering if I shouldn't remove the temporarily defunct teams from rankings, which would stick better to History but would generate a disrepancy between rankings on both sites.

I'm open to all advices on that point. Metropolitan (talk) 13:31, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Alright, I've finally decided to remove defunct teams from historical rankings. As such on 27 october 1956, Poland stil appear with 1497 points, but is now ranked 55th instead of 58th. Metropolitan (talk) 20:58, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for updating! And your question doesn't seem to have an easy answer. I would agree that if a long enough period has passed, it would be better to treat the old and new national football teams as separate entities: have them disappear from the list and start from a rating that is closest to the actual strength of the new team (something you only derive a few years later;-). But what is "long enough" and does the nation have to disappear? South Africa played only 2 matches (against Rhodesia in 1977) between 1955 en 1992, but it remained a nation. Was it really the 10th to 17th best football nation during that time? Austria disappeared as a country between 1937 and 1945, holding 7th position. I'm afraid it's not an exact science. Afasmit (talk) 08:56, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Alright you convinced me. I've put them back, let's better stick to the original source. After all, people can use the FIFA membership filter if they want to check only active teams. Metropolitan (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Bit much clutter in the pre-world cup tables

Though I endorsed the inclusion of absent top 10 teams, I don't think highlighting the absent continental cup winners is helpful, while the chosen color draws too much attention to absent teams in general; the absence of Tahiti was not the most memorable aspect of the 2014 World Cup. For the 2018 World Cup, the top 26 teams are listed, except #11 Netherlands, which in June could very well be Italy. Either team's absence is more notable than, say, that of New Zealand. The withdrawal of India in 1950 is also somewhat spurious to report°, as their withdrawal was only possible because a number of other countries had withdrawn before them. Afasmit (talk) 22:14, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

First match

I'm interested in, how are set points for the first ever match of a national team? Why did e.g. England have at the beginning (1872) 1800 points, Poland (1921) 1600 points and South Sudan (2011) 1300 points? --Kamilhrub (talk) 13:14, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps someone else knows better, but the initial ratings do not seem calculated but may have been arbitrarily set by Bob Runyan and Kirill, as they are unexplained, always a multiple of hundred, and often a bit off. For example, Bolivia starts in 1926 with a rating of 1500. They lose all 9 games before 1938 with an average of 6:1, to the greatest benefit of their first opponent Chile who with a rating of 1350 beats them 7:0. It takes Bolivia until 1957 to reach their initial rating again. They probably were not a 1500 team in 1926. On the other hand, Spain debuts at the Olympic Games in 1920 with a rating of 1800, wins 9 of their first 10 games and stays above 1800 until 1954. They probably were more than an 1800 team to start with.

For chess, FIDE has rules (Rule 8.2 Determining the Rating 'Ru' in a given event of a previously unrated player) that unfortunately don't work well for football teams (e.g. in this case Bolivia would have remained unrated until 1938). It would be nice if there were a mathematical formula to establish an optimal starting rating, e.g. one to minimize the point exchange for all matches in the database (it would be finalized when the team has played 25-30 matches). Of course, that might be tricky and a bit opaque. Afasmit (talk) 03:08, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this insight Afasmit. I've actually calculated once the impact on Eloratings when we modifiy the initial rating, using Kirill's formula. From memory, it turned out that after 40 to 50 games, the initial rating (no matter if it is 0 or 2000) had no impact on the current score of the team, because figures are rounded to the nearest integer, and variations become lower than the integer.

Considering most FIFA affiliated teams have now played more than 200 games, we can consider initial ratings to be irrelevant to the current scores of teams. However, regarding historical data, Kirill already stated that Elo ratings for teams having played less than 40 games can only be considered provisionnal.

For what it's worth, that's the reason as well why it is so difficult to find out when Kirill makes updates for historical games, generally played very long ago. In most cases, their addition doesn't have any impact at all on the current Elo ratings. Metropolitan (talk) 15:44, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

To answer to Afasmit's question: "It would be nice if there were a mathematical formula to establish an optimal starting rating, e.g. one to minimize the point exchange for all matches in the database (it would be finalized when the team has played 25-30 matches)". Considering we mostly deal with historical data, an idea could be to revert the process, what I mean is that we take the 50 first games backwards and check what score it gives in the end to the initial game. I haven't tested it but the result may look interesting. Metropolitan (talk) 15:53, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I like that idea, Metropolitan! If one does this for the first 50 games of Bolivia and Spain, with all other teams kept at the existing rating, you get a starting rating of 1329 for Bolivia and 1927 for Spain. These numbers are quite wrong, e.g. because the opposing team's rating is partially based on the result of the match for which a point exchange is calculated. Still, the ratings are closer to expectations than the 1500 and 1800 the eloratings site has used. Could you do the whole database in reverse time? Perhaps you can convince Kyrill to follow suite. I think the impact on historical ratings and rankings can be quite dramatic. Afasmit (talk) 07:56, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Expected Result

In the section describing the expected result, it says "where dr equals the difference in ratings (add 100 points for the home team). So dr of 0 gives 0.5, of 120 gives 0.666 to the higher-ranked team and 0.334 to the lower, and of 800 gives 0.99 to the higher-ranked team and 0.01 to the lower." - however, this sample if including 100pts for home teams (as per the brackets), is not correct. The expected results are only correct if you exclude the home teams points. Perhaps, a new line just giving the expected results of neutral venue and then home venue?John arneVN (talk) 07:09, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Suggestions for trimming and tidying

A few weeks ago all tables but the current rankings were removed after a brief exchange at the WikiProject Football discussion page (look for "World Football Elo Ratings" in the archives if it is gone by now). After a reply, I reverted the deletions, but it may be good to do some clean-up, as there was some valid argument of cruft building up (as if our text is code...). May I suggest the following:

• The explanation of the ratings probably should come right after the current standings. Better still, the current standings can be in one long column on the right site, as is e.g. done for the FIFA ranking.
• I'm okay with reducing the current standing to the top 50, 60 or 75, avoiding the explanations for teams like Northern Cyprus (17 matches so far), Kosovo (27) and Kurdistan (4) and reducing the length of that table on the right. The FIFA ranking only goes to 20, though that seems unnecessarily Spartan.
• Spiaggia12 (perhaps not an active WP editor anymore) suggested and created a timeline for #1 teams, as is done for the FIFA rankings site (see the archive page). It gives a better impression and takes less space, though there are some drawbacks to it: 1) the timeline is much, much longer than the FIFA timeline. It probably should be represented in pieces if we go for it. 2) As adjustments are made to the football Elo website, the table of #1 teams changes regularly. It is unlikely that a graph will be updated much. 3) I'm not sure how the sometimes long periods of shared number-one-ness can be displayed.
• The "Ranking by days as leader" is specious. It gives just as much value to being #1 in a 4-way competition (the first 30 years or so) to being #1 in the current 238-way competition. Let's cut that one out.
• The "All-time highest ranking" table has the same problem (Wales, Ireland, Trinidad & Tobago, and Guyana are good examples for that). It's mostly a duplicate of the "All-time highest ratings" table anyway. Let's merge the highest rating with years into that table and delete the ATH ranking table.
• "The biggest point gap". Someone added a line in there once about #1 Brazil having the highest point gap over #2 Russia at one time. Turned out to be not the biggest gap, and this information is perhaps too trivial. Let's cut it.
• The new "Top-50 highest-rated" average rating table is easy to extract from the football Elo website, where they display that unfortunately by default now. I suspect the website managers were inspired by our average tables, but, as I wrote while hiding the overall average rating table from view: there is nothing meaningful in comparing the average rating of, to given an example, Scotland between 1872 and 2018 and Montenegro between 2007 and 2018. How much chance would you give the 1912 English team (rating 2216) against the 2013 Spanish team (rating 2165)? Our very active IP 84.125.41.7 editor (who doesn't know yet that you can and are strongly encouraged to write an edit summary each time) reverted me. The word "specious" (superficially plausible, but actually wrong) comes to mind again. South Africa is ranked 23rd because of a dozen matches as a decent team it played between 1906 and 1930, Montenegro, with 88 matches under its belt is ranked 42, while Ireland (with 651 matches) is at 48 (and accidentally left out of the current table, along with East Germany and perhaps some other disappeared countries). Arpad Elo went to some length explaining that rankings over different time periods cannot be compared. Let's delete this one.
• The other average tables have had its share of complaints (original research, lately "trivial"), but to me they are the most interesting and meaningful. Uruguay did have the best team in the 1920s, Mussolini's 1930s Italy was all about football, Hungary and Argentina were the dominant teams in the 1950s despite neither of them winning a world cup then, and England has been a good team over the last 50 years despite never making it to a World Cup final over that time. How is that trivial? The choice of rigid periods is a problem, but unless the Football Elo website starts displaying averages of moveable windows of time (not that difficult thing to do;), this has to do.
• The "Highest rated matches" is a fun table, where you can see which unstoppable force faced what immovable object, but there may be arguments against it to entertain.
• Currently, the website's biggest upsets is out of commission, otherwise this table is easy to defend. The current World Cup's biggest upset (Croatia:Argentina 3:0) hasn't come close to qualify for inclusion, so these are some upsets indeed
• The Elo Ratings before each World Championship has a nice compact format and each table has now been individually sourced. I find it fascinating how weak the 1930s world cups were, with in 1930 and 1938 7 of the top 10 teams missing. Let's keep them.
• "Elo ratings in unaffiliated football teams" I don't know why that one should be kept. The Panjab, Cascadia and Hitra teams never will be officially recognized, even if I am a proud citizen of Cascadia. Let's remove those listings.

And for some good new, we now know that the new FIFA ratings starting late in 2018 are going to be closely modeled after the Elo rating system. It took a while, but for that institute's notorious reluctance in catching up with modernity, we cannot complain. Afasmit (talk) 01:00, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I strongly agree with all your suggestions, Afasmit. Even though I was the user who extended the current ranking from 60 to 100 (we all get a little overexcited from time to time), I accept that this is too much given the erroneous appearance of teams with very little games under their belt, such as the ones you mentioned. Personally I would prefer to have the FIFA Rankings column removed from the top 100 table as it's looking a bit too cluttered for my liking but I accept that it may be more relevant now than ever given FIFA's recent decision to change to an Elo format. GazThomas402 (talk) 16:42, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

There is a draft in my sandbox. Besides the above suggestions, I made the explanatory text a bit more succinct. There was a paragraph about the FIFA ranking being just some league and this one not at all which was unclear to me; I hid it for the moment. I also had some problem placing the color legend with the main table (I made it a top 80) when it floats on the right. Otherwise it looks okay I think. A graphic display of the number 1 ranked teams would really be better. Hopefully someone will get the urge to do that;-) Still to do: a line about FIFA adopting a similar system and a remark about the inclusion of non-affiliated teams, and addition of the highest reached ranking to the highest reached rating table.Afasmit (talk) 09:47, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Reorganise?

It seems to me sections: #History, #Overview, #Basic calculation principles, should be related in primary part of article (1,2,3 sections) no as addition (9, 10, 11 sections). Overview certainly is more important than various informations in 1-8 sections. Dawid2009 (talk) 10:17, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad we agree on this. Did you mean to attach this remark to the discussion just above? What is your opinion on my other suggestions? Afasmit (talk) 18:47, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

No Criticism?

I can not find any section that talks about the overrepresentation of the British teams on the Ranking Elo also about the no-way same thing to take a match between Germany vs San Marino in the same way to a Brazil vs Perú as example181.29.116.218 (talk) 18:25, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

With the British team overrepresentation you probably refer to the longest-at-number-one table, mostly due because the first 30 years only British teams played each other. That list is gone in the next version. The other half of your remark makes little sense as a criticism; distinguishing between such matches is precisely what the Elo method is good at. Afasmit (talk) 07:09, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Reorganization will take place today

Without further comments to my suggestions above, I'll replace the page today with the draft. Two changes since 2 days ago: I've added some text on the forthcoming FIFA-style Elo rating. My interpretation is that it will not reflect relative strengths as well as "our" Elo rating, since no distinction is made between a 16:0 win and a draw decided by a penalty shootout. E.g. the 2014 World Cup semifinals (Brazil:Germany 1:7 and Argentina:Netherlands 0:0) would have involved approximately the same point exchange (no home field advantage either). Perhaps it's not their goal to create a relative strength ranking, but rather have a worldwide tournament (the winner takes it all). I've also expanded the highest rating table with the information of the deleted highest rank table and with the lowest rating reached. Afasmit (talk) 07:29, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Comments on the reorganization and some further suggestions

Pardon me, if I do this a little late, I am not a regular editor and I never imagined today's change to take place. Nowadays that the World Cup is on I visit the page regularly, so I noticed the changes immediately. After examining the reorganized article thoroughly, I can say that I am rather pleased with most of it.

However, I really miss the Ranking by days as leader section. I have read the argument against it, it being misleading. While I can agree with that, I still think it's part of the sport's history and at least I was well aware why England and Scotland has such a good standing on that table. It was also a good indicator to show which teams have ever managed to climb to the top. The list was short and it was easy to spot the details.

Currently the missing information could be obtained from the table under List of number one teams. I see no mention of this section when the trimming of the article was suggested which I find funny. I find the information here to be rather repetitive, for example Spain has 6 entries in 2010 alone. I believe those all should count as the same team, yet they are counted seperately, because Brazil broke their record from time to time for a few days. It's rather hard to find truly useful and entertaining information from that table. As opposed to my comments about the "Ranking by days as leader" part, I find this table to be way too long and hard to find relevant info in it. Maybe we can edit it into smaller chunks similar to the tables under "Elo Ratings before each World Championship".

So to summarize:

- I strongly recommend the Ranking by days as leader section to be reintroduced.

- I am not sure if we truly need the List of number one teams section in its current form.

Onak Proudmoore (talk) 22:03, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

I suggest add to tabele List of number one teams data about first match each national teams and add starting points in ranking Elo each national teams (as new two columns). For example England national team start football officall match in 19th century with 1800 rating. Some non European countries start gameplaying from: 1600, 1400 or 1200 ratings (especially non-European and non-South American countries). In paragraph about differences beetween Elo rating and FIFA rating I also suggest add information about algoritmical discrimination of non-South American and European confederations in FIFA rating system, due to fact it is main difference beetween FIFA rating and Elo Rating system(in Elo rating instead discrimination are diffrent start rating, which are also relevant to old football history). Dawid2009 (talk) 22:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

This can be an interesting piece of information, but it should be put into a seperate table, not to the List of number one teams. That table only deals with the leaders of the ranking system at different dates. If I understand you correctly then your suggestion is about ALL the teams (not just the leaders) and only at the date of their first match. Onak Proudmoore (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Thinking about it more, it seems to me it should be add as new tabele (@Onak Proudmoore. In the background there is information about: Ratings for teams with fewer than 30 matches are considered provisional.. We should include a new tabele where are three data/information: date of first match, number played matches (in case when team is not playing regular and has not a lot of games, excatly, in casse when it is for example 938 we can add: +900~~) and ranking at first gameplay. England started gameplaying in 19th century with 1800 rating. A lot of countries with 1600 or 1400. There are some coutries sterted with 1200 or 1000 and has not a lot of games (for example teams from Oceania). This new tabele would be very valuable. If tabele: ranking by days as leader will be included again andwe have two tabeles, arguments above about delted ranking by days asa lider won't be relevant. Dawid2009 (talk) 06:36, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

This new tabele would be very valuable also due to fact that, in Elo, initial ranking is instead the discrimination factor of confederatkions in FIFA. Dawid2009 (talk) 06:44, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

I also support delte Average ratings. Dawid2009 (talk) 06:53, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Removal (or Why this doesn't go Wikipedia")

Most of the statistics listed on the page seem to be of very limited interest except for a very limited audience. In other words, these are excessive details which do not belong in an article which should be an overview of the topic. The lack of a reliable source which reports these also means that, even if the statistics themselves may be acceptable without a source, since they would qualify as being routine arithmetic, listing all of them without a single source which comments as to why they are relevant again makes this smell like WP:FANCRUFT.

Last but not least, we must also consider WP:INDISCRIMINATE. While listing some of the statistics (like, for example, the current top-10/20/whatever ranking) would be encyclopedically interesting (for example, so that readers can compare this with the official FIFA rankings), all the other details are unneeded and of little interest to the average reader. Now, one could say that we might split these to a separate article (as suggested by WP:INDISCRIMINATE). However, that would require those particular being discussed in reliable sources, per WP:LISTN. A look at the previous AfD and a quick google search reveals little but trivial mentions - some sites do seem to use the Elo ratings discussed here but there is no "in-depth coverage" of the rating system itself. Some of the coverage is now also on the future FIFA system, so care must be taken. The only reliable source which seems to discuss this system is the scholarly article mentioned in the AfD, "A critical survey of football rating systems". Not having access to more than the first pages, I nevertheless doubt that the purpose of that article is listing statistics in the way that is done here. The source cited in the article (ref no. 2) only provides an explanation and a statistical study, but no indiscriminate statistics either. Therefore, lacking a WP:RS which provides further critical commentary, I have removed most of them. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 16:26, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

While I was on board with Afasmit's suggestions for trimming down this article, I have to agree with you that the page still had far too many tables. I imagine that most users only visit this page for the ranking itself and a few looking at how the ratings are calculated, and even then some may eventually find it a better use to visit the main site instead of this page anyway. As much as I dislike seeing other editors' hard work being undone, this page had to be cleared up. GazThomas402 (talk) 16:44, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

I see. I have removed the last one. The "leaders" table could go back in the article in graphic form, as seen at Template:FIFA World Ranking leaders - this would keep it informative while avoiding it being too distracting by taking up a significant amount of space on the article. I have little experience with templates in general and I will be on vacations shortly so someone else would need to do it, but it seems the most reasonable choice. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 16:58, 4 July 2018 (UTC)