European Qualifiers Review - ELO ratings

UEFA Co-efficients aren't a useful measure for comparing teams as each team's individual score has been influenced somewhat by their other league compatriots' performances.

Better measures, in my opinion, are OPTA's power rankings that include all world clubs and my favourite go to which is the Club ELO rankings (clubelo.com). As you would expect it isn't perfect but in the absence of anything else it is worthwhile in the meantime.

Over the qualifiers for the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League I took a look at how teams performed depending on the variance of ELO ratings.

Where the rating points were between only 1 and 50 points (35 ties) of a difference the results didn't seem to matter as 50% of them went in favour of those with a positive variance on points and 50% went in favour of those teams that had a negative variance of between 1 to 50 points. This is in regards to which team won over the two legs.

For teams that had a positive variance of 50-100 points (43 ties) those teams won 60% of the ties.

For 100-200 points (62 ties) it was 73%, 200-300 (34 ties) it was 88%, 300-400 (25 ties) it was 92%, 400-500 (9 ties) it was 78% and 500 and above (7 ties) it was 100% of wins for the teams with the positive variance of ELO points.

The biggest variance tie was in the Europa League Qualifiers where Braga (Portugal) 1651 points and ranked 76th beat Lincold Red Imps (Gibraltar) who had 1005 points and were ranked 609th.

The biggest shock in regards to points was Virtus Acquaviva of San Marino knocking out Milsami Orhei of Moldova. There was a 462 points difference between those teams and Virtus were ranked 617th versus Milsami's 539th.

The biggest shock in regards to ranking was (unfortunately and embarrassingly) Kairat Almaty (Kazakhstan) defeating Celtic on penalties. There was a 413 point difference with Celtic on 1665 and Kairat on 1252. However the rankings were Celtic on 69 and Kairat on 478.

Apart from Kairat who also knocked out teams ranked 446th, 315th and 298th Pafos of Cyprus also did really well. Pafos ranked 258th put out teams ranked 115th, 138th and 178th. Two other teams from Cyprus also had good results against higher ranked teams and it is worth watching to see how Cyprus teams progress in the future.

Israel and Romania were probably the worst performers with 3 teams each losing to teams a lot less ranked than them while Austria and Slovakia had a 2 teams each that had bad ranking losses.

Of those doing well Belarus had two teams who had massive results with Dinamo Minsk and Neman Grodno both having big variance wins.

The highest ranked teams to be knocked out of Europe altogether were Anderlecht (Belgium) ranked 112th, Brondby (Denmark) ranked 132nd, Hammarby (Sweden) ranked 158th, Sporting Charleroi (Belgium) ranked 160th, Banik Ostrava (Czech Rep) ranked 176th, Viking (Norway) ranked 177th, Besiktas (Turkey) ranked 180th and CFR Cluj (Romania) ranked 195th.

Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Latvia, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, Northern Ireland, Romania, San Marino and Wales all don't have any teams left in Europe.

In the Champions League group stages the bottom 3 ranked teams are Qarabag (Azerbaijan), Pafos (Cyprus) and Kairat Almaty (Kazakhstan) who are ranked 188th, 258th and 478th respectively.

The Europa League only has 4 teams lower ranked than Qarabag - Go Ahead Eagles (Netherlands), Ferencvaros (Hungary), Ludogorets (Bulgaria) and Brann (Norway) who are ranked 189th, 190th, 200th and 213th respectively. Meaning Pafos and Kairat Almaty are the two lowest ranked teams over both these competitions.

The five top ranked teams in the Europa League are Aston Villa (England) ranked 10th, AS Roma (Italy) ranked 18th, Nottingham Forest (England) ranked 23rd, Lille (France) ranked 32nd and Bologna (Italy) ranked 39th.

In the Europa Conference League the top ranked teams are - Crystal Palace (England) 16th, Fiorentina (Italy) 37th, Strasbourg (France) 53rd, Mainz 05 (Germany) 54th and Rayo Vallecano (Spain) 73rd.

The bottom ranked teams in the Europa Conference League are Drita (Kosovo) 503rd, KF Shkendija (North Macedonia) 536th, Hamrun Spartuns (Malta) 574th and Lincoln Red Imps (Gibraltar) 609th.

It will be interesting to see how team rankings fair in all the above competitions this season.