Elo ratings of national teams are a starting point for thinking about economic questions that pop up around big tournaments, including the relationship between the features of a country and its footballing success. Similarly, clubs can be linked to the socio-economic indicators of their local areas.
At the outset of the 2026 edition of the World Cup, our Economics Observatory model made a bold prediction about Argentina: we said that they were by quite some way the team most likely to win the tournament. This provoked a fair amount of comment, as almost nobody else had Argentina as favourites, let alone by some distance. In the aftermath of a World Cup final in which Argentina were very much second best to Spain, it is worth revisiting that forecast.
On the evidence of the tournament, Spain were much the better football team. They controlled every match they played, and rarely looked like conceding. Argentina, on the other hand, struggled to get through matches against obviously weaker teams throughout. The subjective viewing of the two teams and their matches would have led a casual observer to predict that Spain would win the final, as they did. The fact remains, however, that Argentina did get to the final.
What can we learn from Elo ratings?
Our Elo ratings are based on results rather than any aspect of how the result was generated. Data on possession, passes complete, fouls committed and other metrics that might be brought to bear on the manner of victories are not part of the information that we use – in order that it be as comparable across as wide a set of matches both currently and through history.
Spain dropped back relative to Argentina during the tournament thanks to being held 0-0 by Cape Verde in their opening match. Spain did catch up through beating stronger teams along the way than Argentina – Belgium, Portugal and Uruguay to Argentina’s Austria, Cape Verde and Egypt. But Argentina remained slightly stronger on the eve of the final, and hence our prediction was for them to edge the match.
The Elo method is also very well regarded, and hence restricting our attention in this manner isn’t a limiting factor. Elo ratings are intuitive, and websites like eloratings.net exemplify this. FIFA’s own rating system is now Elo-based – although it limits the downward adjustments that teams can get, especially during tournaments.
Hence, we will continue to compare our own Elo ratings to FIFA’s. With that outcome in the final, Spain have overtaken Argentina in the FIFA ratings and also in our own Elo ratings.
Chart 1. Who rose and who fell: every finalist’s world ranking, before and after the tournament
Each arrow runs from a team’s Economics Observatory Elo world ranking on the eve of the tournament to its ranking after the final; ‘Biggest change’ switches to places gained or lost.
Starting from today, we will publish monthly updates of Elo ratings by country. We will add women’s ratings in the coming months in the build-up to their World Cup in 2027. Each summer, we will continue to post articles about the tournament taking place that year.
For example, for Iran at this World Cup, it was hard to avoid the reality that their own country was being attacked militarily by the United States. Cape Verde was regularly cited as the smallest country by population at the finals, while Congo has the smallest GDP per capita at just $845 (2022 data), followed by Haiti and Senegal.
Indeed, the seventh poorest nation at the finals was Morocco, who also take their place among both FIFA’s top ten and our own. Norway, Qatar and Switzerland place ahead of hosts the United States on GDP per capita, while the hosts at over 330 million people was the most populous country competing, with Brazil at over 217 million just behind, followed by Mexico and Japan.
Fundamentally, do these broader economic and demographic metrics matter? There is already an academicliterature on this, suggesting an inverted-U shaped relationship with income, and a positive impact of population. These issues have also been covered during the latest tournament by the Financial Times and The Economist.
Chart 2. Income, population and footballing strength at the 2026 finals
Each circle is a 2026 finalist, sized by population. Curaçao is omitted (no comparable data).
What’s coming up next in international and domestic football?
England will play World Cup holders Spain in September at Wembley and have a 16% chance of winning, we estimate, with expected goals of 0.6 to Spain’s 1.5. England’s women will take part in a playoff that we hope will mean that they qualify for the 2027 women’s World Cup.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s men travel to Slovenia, where they have expected goals of 1.2 to Slovenia’s 1.0, and a probability of 40% of winning, 31% of losing. Wales have a tough task away in Portugal, where the hosts have expected goals of 3.3 to Wales’s 0.6 – and hence Wales have just a 4% chance of winning, and a 88% chance of losing.
Northern Ireland travel to Georgia which will also be tough – Georgia have expected goals of 2.4, Northern Ireland just 0.7, and hence there’s a 75% chance they’ll lose, and only a 9% chance that they return with three Nations League points.
Chart 3. September’s internationals: how the home nations are likely to fare
Win/draw/lose probabilities from the home nation’s perspective. Draw probabilities are derived from the same expected-goals model.
These matches will take place in international breaks – pauses from domestic football taking place all around England, and all around the footballing world.
We plan to post material related to the domestic English football season in the run-up to that starting in August. Football in England offers an unparalleled insight into regional activity. No Office for National Statistics dataset offers anything remotely similar on time length, or time frequency, as football results and attendances. A football club’s win percentage is a reflection of the productivity of a firm in a local area.
More than that, a football club is part of the identity of a place, in as much as a country takes pride in how its national team performs. Football clubs are central parts of their communities. As we link national teams to their country’s economic and demographic data, so we will link club teams to their local areas, and evaluate not just economic and demographic statistics, but also health outcomes, educational outcomes and a range of other socio-economic indicators.
Author: James Reade
- J. James Reade
University of Reading
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