The strongest leagues in the world: what the Opta Power rankings say

Do you want to know which men’s leagues are statistically the strongest in the world? Or are you curious whether Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo are currently playing at a higher level? The Opta Power Rankings can provide answers…

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This is an updated version of an Opta Power Rankings article we published in March. If you would like to take a look back at that time, you can find the article here.

With the 2024-25 season well underway for many of the world’s biggest men’s football leagues, this is the perfect opportunity to assess the overall strength of these competitions by taking another look at the Opta Power rankings.

Below you will find an explanation of the Opta Power rankings. To put it simply, it ranks thousands of clubs around the world and from this we can estimate the strength of the leagues in which they are represented.

We conducted a similar analysis several times last season, but now that the 2024-25 season is underway, it’s time to revisit the key talking points.

So, without further ado, this is what the Opta Power Rankings tell us about league strength around the globe…

The five best leagues

The “five best European leagues” have now become an integral part of everyday football parlance and are becoming increasingly recognizable as these competitions developed a financial and popularity gap between themselves and the other competitions.

While there have been cases where certain leagues have threatened to upset the status quo and destroy the top five according to the UEFA coefficients, most of the time in the Opta Power rankings they are pretty much exactly as you would expect .

Of course, one could argue that the “Big Five” – ​​as this group of leagues is sometimes called – have not played a role recently, because in reality the English Premier League is the “Big One” that dominates the other four competitions Respect for financial power overshadows it. And with that in mind, it will come as no surprise to anyone that England’s top flight remains ahead.

The average team rating of the 20 current Premier League clubs on a scale of zero to 100 (with 100 being the highest ranked team in the world and zero being the worst) is 87.9; This means the score has increased by 0.6 since our last update in March, with Manchester City (100), Arsenal (96.9) and Liverpool (95.9) all in the top five of the global club rankings .

In the 2023/24 season, La Liga, Serie A and the German Bundesliga fought for second place. Germany’s top flight was there at the start of the season, but fell to fourth place in March.

However, the Bundesliga has once again moved up to second place with an average rating of 86.2. This is actually the same as Serie A, but the Bundesliga gets the nod because it has more clubs in the top 10 of the team rankings (two – Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen – and one in Serie A – Inter).

The Bundesliga also benefits from the fact that it was bottom of all top five leagues in Darmstadt last season, but has since been relegated.

La Liga is only level with the French Ligue 1; Both competitions have an average Opta Power rating of 85.1. Spain’s top division is unlikely to have been helped by the largely disappointing performances of its representatives in European competition last season.

Yes, yes, Real Madrid won the UEFA Champions League againbut otherwise the Spanish clubs disappointed. No La Liga team made it past the knockout play-offs of the Europa Conference League, none reached the quarter-finals of the Europa League and Carlo Ancelotti’s men were the only ones to get past the round of 16 of the Champions League.

Still, La Liga has more clubs in the top 10 than Ligue 1, with Los Blancos and Barcelona in second and ninth, with only Paris Saint-Germain (seventh) as high.

Top 10 leagues around the world

As you might expect, European competitions dominate the rankings of the top ten leagues in world football, according to Opta Power Rankings.

However, Brazil’s Serie A – or Campeonato Brasileirão – is the highest-ranked non-European league in the world, sitting just outside the top five in sixth place.

With an average Opta Power Rating of 80.8, the clubs from Brasileirão are ahead of, among others, the Portuguese Primeira Liga (80.1), the Dutch Eredivisie (77.3) and the Belgian Pro League (79.2).

When we last looked at the rankings in March, Brazilian clubs were at a disadvantage because they only competed in their local national championships. The Brasileirão and Copa Libertadores both began in April, and Brazil has two representatives in the semifinals of the continental competition: Atlético Mineiro and Botafogo, who also lead the Brasileirão. Botafogo (58th) still trails Palmeiras (52nd) as the highest-placed Brazilian club in the Opta Power rankings, although there is another non-European club even higher – but more on that later.

The second non-European league among the 10 highest-rated top competitions is Major League Soccer (MLS) in ninth place. Last season, we analyzed MLS’ remarkable rise from 29th to 10th in world football, overtaking regional rivals Liga MX of Mexico. This was partly a result of their teams’ respective performances in the 2023 League Cup, which is contested by MLS and Liga MX clubs. We assumed Liga MX could recover if Mexican clubs performed well in clashes with MLS teams in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, but it appears that MLS has cemented its position as the region’s top contender. Liga MX is in 13th place with an average club rating of 76.7.

The Argentine Primera División – or Superliga – is the third non-European league among the ten highest-ranked top leagues in world football, ranking tenth. This means they have also overtaken Liga MX, whose clubs have an average rating of 77.5.

But now back to Europe; Portugal’s Primeira Liga (80.1) and Belgium’s Pro League (79.2) remain in the top 10, although the latter has fallen a few places since our last data analysis.

Still, it might surprise some that the Pro League is ranked so highly, especially considering many probably view the Eredivisie as being of higher quality historically. What we need to consider here, however, is the weaker end of both competitions. For example, twelve current Eredivisie clubs are ranked lower than 300 in the Opta Power rankings, while only seven clubs from the Belgian top flight are ranked lower than 300.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are only 16 clubs in the Pro League, so on average they should of course be ranked slightly higher than the 18 best Dutch teams. The situation is similar with the Danish Superligaen, which is in 11th place above the Eredivisie. Denmark’s top division only has 12 teams, so it’s easier for the average ranking to be higher.

This is one of the main reasons why it is difficult to fairly compare different leagues. However, an alternative approach would be to look at the average rankings of the top 10 ranked teams for each competition.

They may not be huge, but there are differences. Serie A and the Bundesliga swap places, as do the Primeira Liga and Brasileirão, and the Eredivisie is ahead of the Danish Superligaen and the Argentine Superliga, just outside the top 10.

But as the sharp-eyed among you will have noticed, we have included the caveat Top class Leagues in this section. Some of you have definitely come here looking for answers about the English Championship; Don’t worry, we won’t disappoint you.

If we analyze the Opta Power rankings of all clubs in every league – and not just the top flight clubs – the Championship makes it into the top 10 worldwide.

While the championship still lags behind MLS in terms of average team ratings, it leaves behind a number of top-tier competitions. Of course, this is partly due to the aforementioned disparity in quality in certain top leagues, while England’s second division is notorious for its unpredictability.

The situation can be illustrated quite well by comparing the Championship with the Eredivisie, which has a much greater diversity of skills, as shown below.

The next highest second division in the world is the German 2. Bundesliga, which is ranked 17th, closely followed by the Italian Serie B at 19th.

MLS vs Saudi Pro League – The latest debate between Messi and Ronaldo

With Cristiano Ronaldo in the Saudi Pro League and Lionel Messi in the MLS with Inter Miami, the intrigue surrounding these competitions has increased immeasurably over the past year.

With that comes the inevitable – one might say tiring – back and forth from Ronaldo and Messi superfans about who is playing in the better league or at a higher level.

It may be tedious, but in the name of content, we’ll get into it and hopefully provide some statistical context to the debate.

Let’s start with the simple fact: MLS is the ninth best league in world football according to Opta Power Rankings, while the Saudi Pro League is only 33rd. To give you a better idea of ​​what that means, the Saudi top teams’ average Opta Power Rating of 73.6 puts it just behind Colombia’s Primera A and on par with Greece’s Super League.

Additionally, according to Opta Power Rankings, MLS is a tougher competition when it comes to team quality. There is a 638-place difference in the rankings between the highest- and lowest-ranked MLS teams; For the Saudi Pro League the difference is a whopping 1,130 places.

However, the top-ranked non-European team in the Opta Power rankings is a Saudi Arabian team. Al Hilal is in 34th place, just behind Athletic Club and Manchester United but 35 places ahead of top-placed MLS team Columbus Crew.

Interestingly, Ronaldo’s Al Nassr and Messi’s Inter Miami are almost next to each other in the rankings, with the former coming in 92nd and the latter in 98th.

So while the very best teams in the Saudi Pro League appear to be ranked higher than those in the MLS, the worst teams in the MLS would perform significantly better than the worst in the Pro League, according to Opta Power Rankings.

Additionally, the Pro League’s average rating of 73.6 shows it still has a long way to go – although it’s up 1.6 since March, so some progress appears to have been made.

The Opta Power rankings

Below you can find the Opta Power rankings. Use the interactive function to find club rankings. You can search for specific teams, countries, leagues and confederations to create your own rankings for men’s or women’s football.

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