Disclaimer: This post is exceedingly boring and only necessary because I still live by the rules of my high school math teachers; I show my work. If you have no interest in how I created the statistics that I’ll be analyzing tomorrow, feel free to skip this post and rejoin the series tomorrow. For those of you nerdy or bored enough to read this, thanks.

The first two posts in this series looked at the US’ place in the world, a growing second tier nation that struggles against top tier teams. To delve further than this requires looking at the players that comprise this team and similar teams around the world. As I said in the first post of this series, rankings are an impossible thing. This is doubly true when we move to the thought of rating individual players in a team sport. However, to really understand the current state of US soccer, it is a necessary endeavor.

Because most rating systems of individual players would require either a completely subjective rating or a PhD in mathematics and a QB-rating-like statistical formula, I am opting for a disaggregation-reaggregation concept. The theory behind this rating is that club success is dependent on aggregate individual success. By rating a club on its current successes and assigning the club’s success level to the players responsible for it, a rating for each player can be obtained.

The rating used starts at 10 and works its way down. In this rating, individual clubs are assigned a rating based on their best performance either in international club tournaments or league play. This rating is then assigned to each of the starters and regular subs of the club. Bench players are assigned a rating of two less than the club rating except for those bench players playing on a UEFA Champions League knockout round club. These players are assigned a rating of one less than the club rating.

While there is a level of error introduced by assigning the same rating to every starter on a club, the competitive transfer market in global football keeps this level of error relatively low. Because clubs, unlike national teams, can address positional deficiencies in the open market, the quality difference among the starters should be relatively small. A standout player on a “7” club, will be bought by a “9” or “10” club.

For space and usefulness, I’ve included only the ways for a club to be at least a “6”. The assignment of ratings are the result of way too much of my free time studying international results and player transfers. These ratings are not perfect (an underdog making a deep run in a tournament can overrate its players) and by virtue of the data type the ratings cannot be tested for significance. However, it will allow an analysis of what national teams look like from a “talent” perspective.

Tournaments

The international tournaments offer the best opportunity to judge teams from different countries against each other. The interplay between the UEFA Champions League and the Europa League makes is relatively easy to determine where to break one rating level from another. The other competitions are a little harder to set break points because they are dominated more by individual nations. The best example of this is the Mexican domination of the CONCACAF Champions League. It would be difficult to claim that the quarterfinal losers belong in the same category as the quarterfinal winners. To a lesser extent, CONMEBOL, CAF, and AFC all suffer similar issues. The one thing that the Club World Cup results have shown in the last few years is that UEFA rules the club world, CONMEBOL is comfortably in second, and the top team from the other three confederations are all about equal. Below is a table showing the rankings for clubs in international tournaments.

Rating	UEFA	CONMEBOL	CONCACAF	CAF	AFC
10	CL KO
9	EL KO	CLi QF
8	CL GP4 EL GP	CLi KO CLi GP3 CS SF	CL SF	CL SF	CL SF
7	EL PO	CLi GP4 CLi R1 CS R2	CL QF	CL GP Cup SF	CL KO
6	CL R2 EL R3	CS R1	CL GP	CL R2 Cup GP	CL GP Cup SF

Competition Abbreviations	Round Abbreviations
CL = Champion's League EL = Europa League CLi = Copa Libertadores CS = Copa Sudamericana	SF = Semifinalist QF = Quarterfinalist KO = Knockout Stage Participant GP = Group Stage Participant GPx = x Place in Group (i.e. GP3 = 3rd place in group) PO = Playoff Stage Participant Rx = x Round Participant (i.e. R2 = 2nd Round Participant)

Leagues

Aggregating individual club success in international tournaments for each countries gives an approximate view of the relative strength of the domestic league. Except for MLS, each country’s top division is divided into thirds, with the top third rated at the highest number, the middle third rated at the middle number, and the bottom third rated at the lowest number. For league sizes not divisible by three, the following patterns were followed, 20 teams: 6-8-6, 16 teams: 5-6-5, 14 teams: 4-6-4. MLS is split into two because the league structure shrinks the difference between the top and bottom teams. For a country’s second division a 25%-50%-25% ratio is used with the top quarter of the second division of equal rating as the bottom third of the top division. For the big four, this means second divisions of 7-6-5.

Ratings	UEFA	CONMEBOL	CONCACAF	CAF	AFC
9-8-7	England Spain Italy Germany
8-7-6	France Russia Ukraine Romania Portugal	Brazil
7-6-5	Netherlands Turkey Greece Belgium Switzerland Denmark	Argentina Uruguay	Mexico
6-5			MLS
6-5-4	Scotland Bulgaria Czech Republic Norway Austria Serbia Israel Cyprus Sweden Slovakia Poland Croatia Belarus	Colombia Venezuela Ecuador Chile Paraguay Peru Bolivia	Costa Rica Honduras	Egypt Tunisia	Japan South Korea

For clubs in international play, their final rating is the higher of their international tournament rating and their league rating. Thus, for Rangers, they would be an “8” even though their position in the Scottish Premier League would make them a “6”.

For a player who has been with multiple clubs during a season, the higher rating for the player will be used. In Landon Donovan’s case, this would make him a “9” as he played in the Europa League Knockout Stage with Everton. Interestingly, he was a “9” the year before as well sitting on the bench for a Champions League Knockout Stage club.

By assigning the club rating to individual players and averaging those ratings for starting lineups for each country’s national team, a reasonable representation can be made of the nation’s underlying on-field talent. Tomorrow, we’ll look at what that data says about the US compared to the world.