Celtic moved up a position in Opta’s global Power Ranking index after beating Rangers 3-2 at the weekend, now sandwiched in between English Premier League side West Ham United and Ligue 1 side Rennes.
The data tracking company launched their ranking service in January this year, which places teams across the world into a quick reference table based on a variety of factors to determine their strength.
They explain: “Opta’s Power Rankings is a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to nearly 13,500 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world. The Power Rankings are updated daily and currently rank teams from 183 different countries and 413 unique domestic leagues, providing a truly global rating system in men’s football.
“Power Rankings utilise a hierarchical Elo-based rating system to measure the strength of each team. The Elo rating system is a skill score which has been adapted to many sports since its creation for chess player ratings, including the official FIFA world rankings for both men and women. The Elo algorithm used here analyses match results from over 2,500,000 games since 1990 to assign a rating to each team that is comparable across leagues, countries, and continents.”
Celtic currently sit 51st in the entire world, ahead of many teams in Europe’s top five leagues with an 86 rating out of 100. Rangers’ defeat at Celtic Park resulted in them dropping six places in the latest published table, now all the way down in 91st behind Bodo/Glimt, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Copenhagen.
The biggest risers in the Scottish Premiership this week were St Mirren and Ross County who moved up a whopping 126 and 170 places respectively after weekend victories. The Buddies have now broken into the top 1000 global teams.
If Celtic keep winning in the top flight and the Scottish Cup, Ange Postecoglou’s Bhoys could keep moving up the table. Athletic Club, Brentford, Real Betis, Wolfsburg and Sporting Lisbon are all in striking distance, within the next ten places just outside of the top 40.
Currently, the top five ranked sides in the entire world are Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Napoli, Real Madrid and Arsenal.
In other news, Celtic B power through to cup final with Tuesday win; potential derby awaits.
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