Make up a football formula

The Game Room
1

In Europe, the top football club competition is the Champions League.
It’s very popular, both in countries entering and spectators watching.

36 clubs from 17 countries qualified for the initial group stage, as shown here.

Table & standings | UEFA Champions League 2025/26 | UEFA.com

Now here’s my request.
Commentators often say “this league is the strongest in Europe.”
Well I’d like Dopers to come up with a formula to rank all the countries based purely on the table and finishing positions.

So a simple example would be:

Country rank is higher as per the higher number of clubs that qualified for the table.

But hopefully you lot could come up with better (perhaps using table positions as well?)

To help, here is the table listed by country, number of clubs + club position:

England (six) 1,3,4,6,8,12
Spain (four) 5,9,14,29
Germany (four) 2,16,17,33
Italy (four) 10,13,15,35
France (three) 11,21,25
Portugal (two) 7,24
Belgium (two) 19,27
Netherlands (two) 28,32
Greece (one) 18
Turkey (one) 20
Azerbaijan (one) 22
Norway (one) 23
Cyprus (one) 26
Denmark (one) 31
Czech (one) 34
Kazakstan (one) 36

2

Hmm, lots of ways to do it, I’d think

Assuming you want to use both of these factors: number of teams and finishing position of each team.

Likely you want to multiply the two somehow. Unclear to me if you think it should be linear (i.e. finishing 1st is just a bit better than finishing 3rd, the difference between 4th and 5th is the same as the difference between 33rd and 34th) or exponential (1st is quite a bit better than 3rd, with the gaps “flattening out” the further down you go).

If you go with something linear, I’d just average the finishing positions, subtract that from 36, and multiply by the number of teams.

So England would get: (36-[(1+3+4+6+8+12)/6]) * 6 = 182 points.
Kazakhstan would get: 0 points.

The total “country table” would be:

Country Points
England (six) 1,3,4,6,8,12 182
Spain (four) 5,9,14,29 87
Germany (four) 2,16,17,33 76
Italy (four) 10,13,15,35 71
France (three) 11,21,25 51
Portugal (two) 7,24 41
Belgium (two) 19,27 26
Greece (one) 18 18
Turkey (one) 20 16
Azerbaijan (one) 22 14
Norway (one) 23 13
Netherlands (two) 28,32 12
Cyprus (one) 26 10
Denmark (one) 31 5
Czech (one) 34 2
Kazakhstan (one) 36 0

That doesn’t feel too bad to me, but maybe some tweaking is in order?

ETA: An easier way to explain this formula is you are just giving points for each spot earned - from 35 points for first down to 0 for last. Then just add up all the points.

3

There are three very different groups of clubs in that score, and that should be taken into account, even if it is not apparent at first sight.
First group: teams placed 1 to 8, qualify directly to the knock-out round of the last 16.
Second group: teams placed 9 to 24, play the play-offs in pairs against each other. They are paired by draw, probably with some tweaking as usual in UEFA and FIFA drawings. Consequently only half of them will qualify for the round of last 16. And they will have to play two more high stakes games than the first 8, with the corresponding risk of injury, losing form, over scheduling etc. They should get fewer points, around half I suggest.
Third group: 25 to 36. Those clubs no longer play in the Champions League this season. They are eliminated. No points deserved.

So the points I would award are:
1st to 8th place: 100, 98, 96, 94, 92, 90, 88, 86 points.
9th to 24th: 50, 49, 48, 47… 39, 38, 37, 36 points.
25th to 36th: no points.

England wins by a country mile, but the first four nations in the precedent post do not change. Whether France and Portugal switch places I am too lazy to calculate, as it does not matter.

4

So, I think there are a couple big issues with trying to do this.

  1. Strength of a league isn’t well defined. Is a top heavy league where the #1 team is ~the best in the world but the bottom of the table is terrible better than a league where everyone is pretty good, but unlikely to win the UCL?
  2. Measuring a league based only on some subset of the teams assumes some sort of merit in making the UCL.

Probably more issues too.

If you’re only going on table + position, ignoring points, GD, strength of schedule, etc I think you just give points in proportion to how far up the table you are perhaps with some lower weight for number of teams. That is having more teams is better, but the 4th team is worth less than the 3rd team from the same country.

That said @Jas09 's ranking comports with popular understanding for at least the top 6 slots, which seems like a good endorsement.

5

ISTR reading recently that a pretty good gauge was wage bill. Sure, every now and then a team with a smaller payroll will make it big, but over a longer haul, those highly paid players tend to push their respective teams to the top. And it’s a much easier metric than many other formulae.