Question 1

Which matches count toward the club ratings?

Accepted Answer

Completed matches from 18 supported domestic top flights and UEFA club competitions count, including Champions League, Europa League, Conference League, their qualifying rounds, and the UEFA Super Cup.

Question 2

Which domestic leagues are covered?

Accepted Answer

The supported top flights are in England, Scotland, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Türkiye, Greece, Poland, Norway, Austria, Denmark, Azerbaijan, Czechia, and Switzerland. Historical availability varies by league and season.

Question 3

How is a domestic league table different from the ELO ranking?

Accepted Answer

A domestic table uses that league’s normal points, goals, and matchdays for one season. The ELO ranking estimates club strength across the wider UEFA pool. They answer different questions, so their order does not have to match.

Question 4

When will a finished match show up?

Accepted Answer

Updates appear after match data is processed. A short delay after full time is possible.

Question 5

Why is my club missing or unranked?

Accepted Answer

The ratings cover UEFA clubs, but a club still needs a completed match in the covered data. A long-inactive club can also lose its rank as uncertainty grows, while its last rating remains available.

Question 6

Which ranking should I use?

Accepted Answer

Use beyondELO for the main club rating and FIFA SUM as a second comparison view.

Question 7

Why do beyondELO and FIFA SUM disagree?

Accepted Answer

beyondELO models venue, score margin, team-specific uncertainty, and opponent reliability. FIFA SUM follows a simpler FIFA-style update with different match weights and knockout rules, so the ratings and order can differ.

Question 8

What do rating deviation and provisional status mean?

Accepted Answer

Rating deviation (RD) measures uncertainty, not strength. New or returning clubs have higher RD and can move faster; repeated evidence lowers RD and makes the rating more stable.

Question 9

How is a beyondELO club rating calculated?

Accepted Answer

The rating gap, plus home advantage, sets the expected result. The actual result minus that expectation is then scaled by competition and round importance, a diminishing goal-margin multiplier, the club’s own uncertainty, and the opponent rating’s reliability.

Question 10

How can clubs from different domestic leagues be compared fairly?

Accepted Answer

Domestic matches refine the order inside each league, but cannot set one country’s level against another. UEFA matches connect those pools. A two-pass rebuild learns country-level starting offsets from that cross-league evidence, so new clubs do not all begin at an unrealistic identical level.

Question 11

Does playing at home affect the calculation?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Each club learns its own home-field effect, regularised toward the UEFA-wide norm when evidence is limited and gradually pulled back after a long absence. Neutral venues use no home advantage.

Question 12

Why do clubs gain different points from the same match?

Accepted Answer

Each club has its own effective update size: high uncertainty makes its rating move faster, while an uncertain opponent is weaker evidence. The exchange is therefore deliberately not zero-sum.

Question 13

What happens after months of inactivity?

Accepted Answer

The displayed ELO does not simply decay. Its uncertainty grows—slowly in season, faster over summer, and fastest after a club becomes absent—so later results can move the rating more quickly.

Question 14

Are extra-time and penalty wins treated like normal wins?

Accepted Answer

No. A win after extra time is scored as 0.75 versus 0.25. A shootout is treated as the draw that preceded it because the shootout itself is not considered reliable evidence of team strength. FIFA SUM keeps its own separate shootout rule.

Question 15

Do big wins move ratings more?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with diminishing returns. The model uses a logarithmic goal-margin multiplier, so every additional goal adds less weight than the previous one and a single rout cannot dominate the ranking.

Question 16

How are individual players rated?

Accepted Answer

Every player has a beyondELO rating built from their appearances in covered competitions. It reflects how they performed against expectations — given the opponent, the venue, and minutes played — blending the match rating with a position-weighted involvement score.

Question 17

Why is a player missing or unranked?

Accepted Answer

A player needs rated appearances in covered competitions. New players stay provisional, with high uncertainty, until they have played enough, and some appearances are still being linked to the correct player.

Question 18

Does position affect the rating?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The involvement score weights actions by position group — goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, or forward — so clearances by a defender and goals by a forward are judged against the right baseline. The rankings show each position group.

Question 19

Why did two players in the same match gain different amounts?

Accepted Answer

Each rating moves on its own expectation, uncertainty, and minutes played, so teammates in the same result rarely change by the same amount.

Question 20

Can I use the ratings in my project?

Accepted Answer

Ratings are product data, not an open download. Discuss access on the contact page.

Question 21

Is there a public API?

Accepted Answer

Not today. The site uses internal APIs, but public API access is not offered.

How beyondELO rankings, leagues, and ratings work

Match and league coverage

Rating systems and confidence

How club ratings are calculated

Player ratings

Data access

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