North American Parity Index - June 2017

As most soccer fans are well aware, FIFA keeps a ranking of every national team. It’s primary purpose is to determine seeding draws in official FIFA competitions such as the World Cup; though each confederation also use it in similar fashion for their own championship matches, qualifiers, and other competitions.

FIFA uses a complex mathematical formula to calculate the rankings after every game; these are calculated on everything from rank of opponent, difficulty (which is based on what confederation the each team is from), importance of the match (friendly, or tournament), and of course end result of the match. The points are cumulative over a 4 year span.

Points=Result * Importance * Opponent (FIFA rank - 200) * Confederation

There are a handful of sites that make an attempt at it. Football Database Rankings is one, Club World Ranking is another. Their methods are similar to FIFA’s, but of course are adapted to club-level.

As part of my weekly Power Ranking Averages articles, I have at times attempted a sort of “FIFA-esque” ranking using various methods of calculation; none have really worked great. Ultimately I thought to myself, it would be great to make a full table for North American teams to show how Liga MX, Ascenso (Mexican 2nd division), MLS, NASL, and USL compare. Naturally that’s quite a tall order, not to mention a very big spreadsheet. To adapt the FIFA method, or the versions used by the above sites is also a major undertaking, which frankly I (being a lowly amateur writer doing this for fun) would be hard pressed to complete.

Thus I give you a “FIFA Lite” version for North America. First a caveat - these rankings are not based on individual results, it is entirely based on points earned in league play, national cups (Copa MX, USOC and Canadian), league playoffs, and champions league. I’ve gone back to track the last 5 years worth of points per game for each league (Liga MX, Ascenso, MLS, NASL, and USL). Leagues are adjusted based on difficulty from a poll of fans to gauge how they compare:

• Liga MX 81%
• CCL 76.7%
• MLS 67.8%
• CopaMX 64.4%
• Ascenso MX 55.3%
• USOC 45.6%
• USL 38.3%
• NASL 36.7%
• Canadian Cup 14.4%

So my calculation is thus:

Team 5 year Points Per Game * Competition Multiplier.

• Teams that have been in more than one league during the time period tracked (5 years), are listed with an * next to the league they are currently in.
• Teams that have re-branded during the time period tracked (5 years), or changed names are listed with a # after their current name.

If you’d like to see other leagues represented, suggest them in the comments below and I’ll try to add them for the next update.