PELE International Football Rankings ⚽
What happens when you blend 150+ years of soccer history and player market values into a brand-new model? You get PELE, our insanely detailed, predictive rating system for all 211 FIFA teams.
⚽ The latest on PELE
July 19, 2026
Spain, our top-rated team heading into the tournament, has won the World Cup! In the process — they allowed only 1 goal in 8 matches — they’ve become one of the most highly-rated teams ever, according to PELE. With a relatively young roster, they’ll also have a chance to become a true dynasty in 2030, when the World Cup will be co-hosted by Spain.
You can find more about PELE on the methodology page.
We’ll continue to update PELE after the World Cup is over based on player market values and other international results. Thank you for your support throughout the tournament! -NS
PELE, the new international soccer model that Silver Bulletin launched in conjunction with the 2026 World Cup, uses a mix of match results, player market values, and historical economic and geographic data to rate all 211 FIFA teams. PELE covers all competitive international soccer matches since 1872 and is updated after new matches are played.
PELE was quite accurate in the World Cup. The system’s top 2 teams in our ratings as of the start of the tournament (Spain and Argentina) met in the final, and our #3 and #4 teams (England and France) also finished with those exact rankings after being eliminated in the semifinals. It also identified some more surprising contenders like Norway.
We’ll continue to update PELE with other international match results and will consider other special extensions in the future, such as for the 2028 European Championship. We’re also evaluating whether to extend PELE to club soccer.
You can get a more formal introduction to PELE on the methodology page. But the best way to demonstrate the breadth of the system is by example. So let’s start with our overall PELE ratings. One tip: we’d encourage you to view PELE on the web rather than in email or the app.
PELE ratings
Each team gets a continuously updated pair of ratings: PELE and Tilt. PELE is the headline number that predicts overall team quality. It’s basically a fancy variation of an Elo rating system, though it’s affected by changes in player market values and player ages as well as match results.
The rest of this page contains:
A comparison of PELE and FIFA rankings;
Tilt ratings;
Offense, defense and round-robin results;
Future match projections;
The Atlas of PELE, our 12 footballing regions and home-field advantage;
Market values and projected team trajectories;
And, detailed historical PELE data since 1872, including the best teams of all-time.
The last few “advanced” sections are a bonus for paying subscribers. We greatly appreciate your support and we’ll consider extending PELE to club soccer depending on the amount of interest in the model.
Ready for some ranking controversies? You can already get a few hints for how PELE differs from other systems. Because PELE is designed to be predictive, it can be more sympathetic to recent underperformers and more skeptical of teams on a possibly unsustainable hot streak. Market value data can help teams with star talent like Norway in PELE. Here’s how PELE compares with the current FIFA rankings.
Tilt ratings
Offense and defense are more fluid in soccer than in sports like American football, but there are some predictable patterns. Tilt ratings indicate a team’s tendency toward attacking or defensive play. They are based on both long-term tactical preferences and the personnel on the field — the presence of Erling Haaland makes Norway more attack-minded than they otherwise would be. Tilt measures the impact on the total number of goals scored combined between both teams.1 For instance, if Germany’s Tilt rating is +.6 (“very attacking”) that means games involving Germany will tend to feature 3+ goals rather than the ~2.5 that is more common in modern international matches.
Offense, defense and round-robin results
Now that we have both PELE and Tilt ratings, we can do some neat things. Most importantly, we can forecast matches! Our round-robin results project every pairwise combination of match results between the 211 current FIFA members (weighted slightly toward more challenging matchups2). Also, this process allows us to derive offensive and defensive ratings for each team, as measured by the projected number of goals scored and allowed against the same competition. Teams with negative Tilt ratings like Colombia and Senegal will produce lower-scoring matches with more draws.
Future match projections
But better yet, let’s forecast some actual games. We’ve uploaded the schedule for all future international matches that we’re aware of. For games eligible for extra time, the projections reflect the results at the end of regulation play, consistent with how the odds are usually listed at betting sites.