Strongest football nations by Elo Ratings

The following is a list of national football teams ranked by their average Elo score from January 1, 1970 to October 1, 2008. The averages are calculated from the scores on the [http://www.eloratings.net/world.html World Football Elo Ratings web site] based on data provided by [http://www.rdasilva.demon.co.uk/ Advanced Satellite Consulting] . As the Elo scores reflect the previous successes of a team, the list probably displays the relative strengths of national teams since the mid to late 1960s. Before this time intercontinental play was fairly limited and many nations in Africa and Asia had played too few games yet to create a representative Elo score. Strong "short-lived" or young countries like East Germany and Croatia do not appear in this list, but are in the table below showing the top 20 per decade.

Top 20 per decade

The average score (AES) for each decade (Jan 1 19X0 - Dec 31 19X9) is probably representative of the team's strengths for a decade starting a few years earlier as the Elo scores reflect past achievements. For example in the 1950s column, the successes of the Argentina team in the 40s probably made them outrank the Hungarian team that was dominant for much of the 50s.

External links

* [http://www.eloratings.net/world.html World Football Elo ratings]