Football Ratings Glossary

Power rankings come with their own vocabulary. This glossary explains every term you will meet on Footiqra in a sentence or two, in alphabetical order. For the full picture of how the pieces fit together, start with how the power ranking works.

Base rating

The rating every club started with when the data begins in 2024/25: 1500 points. It is also the reference point for the summer reset: each club keeps half of its distance from 1500 into a new season.

Effective rating

A club's own team rating plus the strength of its league. This is the number shown in the power ranking and used for every forecast, because it puts clubs from different leagues on one scale.

Elo rating

A rating system first built for chess. Every team has a number, and after each match points move from the loser to the winner. Beating a stronger team earns more points than beating a weaker one. Footiqra's model is an Elo rating adapted for football.

Expected score

What the model expects a team to get out of a match, between 0 and 1, where a win counts 1 and a draw 0.5. A 100-point rating lead means an expected score of about 0.64, or 64%.

Home advantage

The extra strength a team gets from playing at home. Footiqra adds 65 rating points to the home side when it calculates the chances of a match.

K-factor

How far a rating can move after a single match. Footiqra uses 20 points as the base step, scaled up for surprising results and bigger winning margins.

League strength

A value shared by all clubs in one league that measures how strong the league is compared with the others. It starts from UEFA coefficients and moves only with results in European matches. Why league strength matters explains the idea in detail.

Margin of victory

How much the size of a win counts. A two-goal win moves ratings 1.5 times as much as a one-goal win; for three goals or more the factor keeps growing, but more slowly.

Match forecast

The chances of a home win, draw and away win for a fixture, calculated from the gap between the two effective ratings, home advantage included. Draws are most likely between evenly matched sides. See the predictions for the next seven days.

Power ranking

All clubs from the covered leagues sorted by effective rating. Unlike a league table, it compares clubs across leagues and weighs every result by the strength of the opponent. See the current power ranking.

Predicted final table

The expected end-of-season table of a league, based on season simulations. It shows each club's chances of winning the title, finishing in the top four or going down.

Promoted club penalty

Clubs that come up from a lower division start their first season 50 points below the base rating, because there is no top-flight form to carry over.

Rating

Short for a club's Elo-based strength in rating points. Higher means stronger. Differences matter more than absolute values: what counts is how far apart two clubs are.

Scorer power ranking

Europe's top goalscorers on one scale: league goals weighted by the strength of the league, penalties counted lower and scaled to the same number of matches. See the scorer power ranking.

Season simulation

The rest of a league season played out 10,000 times with the forecast probabilities. After every simulated match the ratings update, just like after a real one. Counting the outcomes gives the chances in the predicted final table.

Table vs. strength

A comparison of each club's place in the league table with its place by rating within the same league. A big gap means the table and the underlying strength tell different stories. See table vs. strength.

UEFA coefficient

UEFA's ranking of national associations, based on the results of their clubs in European competition over the last five seasons. Footiqra uses it only to set the starting league strength.