By Opta Analyst | Created at 2026-07-27 12:00:11 | Updated at 2026-08-02 19:45:13
6 days ago
Who are the best teams in world football? A common question that’s been asked through the ages, but one that isn’t always easy to answer… Unless we consult the Opta Power Rankings.
The Opta Power Rankings is a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,500 men’s domestic football teams and over 2,500 women’s clubs on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
This means you can finally settle that debate between friends where somebody believes Liverpool are stronger than fellow Premier League sides Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, or perhaps they feel La Liga giants Barcelona are closer to the top of the pyramid than Bundesliga behemoths Bayern Munich, Serie A‘s Inter Milan, Ligue 1 dominators PSG and record UEFA Champions League winners Real Madrid.
The Opta Power Rankings also gives fans a valuable way to compare the biggest clubs in the women’s game. Whether you’re debating the dominance of clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal or Manchester United in the Women’s Super League, or weighing up the strength of European powerhouses such as Barcelona and Lyon, the rankings provide you a clear, data-driven comparison.
Click below for a full explanation on how the Opta Power Rankings are calculated.
Opta Power Rankings Explained
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The Opta Power Rankings doesn’t just look across the top European leagues in England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Portugal. They update daily and rank teams from 183 different FIFA member countries and 562 unique domestic leagues, providing a truly global rating system in men’s and women’s football.
This all means you can compare football clubs across Europe to the best in Brazil and Japan, Belgium and Argentina, Switzerland and Qatar, Hungary and Ukraine, and even Uruguay and Sweden.
Want to know how Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema’s competition is shaping up in Saudi Arabia? Got it. With Lionel Messi now at Inter Miami in MLS, do you want to compare how they compare to teams in Europe? Go for it. Or maybe you’re curious about the difference in standard between the London City Lionesses and Barcelona after Alexia Putellas’ move. The possibilities are endless.
In our interactive tool, you’re able to search by a specific team (eg: Juventus or Manchester United), country (eg: Austria or Denmark), league (eg: Serie A, Ligue 1 or WSL) or confederation (eg: South America for CONMEBOL teams or Asia for AFC teams).
What about the strength of leagues outside Europe, like MLS, the Saudi Pro League, Brazil’s Série A or Argentina’s Primera División? Is there a second-tier competition, like the English Championship, that is stronger than top-flight leagues elsewhere? And can we answer the question of who is playing in a stronger league, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi?
We can turn to the Opta Power Rankings to help answer those questions, and a whole lot more in our Opta Football League Rankings.
And have you checked out our Opta football predictions hub yet? Not only can you find the pre-match Opta supercomputer predictions for every game in the men’s top five European leagues, you’ll be able to analyse the matches using our Opta match centres.
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