The SquadScore is the rating each team carries today. It blends five signals into one number: the club form of the current squad, squad market value, national-team form, tournament pedigree, and, with the World Cup underway, form in the tournament itself. The question behind it is direct: on current evidence, how strong is this team right now?
The SquadScore is not a prediction. Nor is it a reputation index. A full-back in great form at Leverkusen scores above a bigger name having an uneven season at a mid-table club, and a side that keeps out-creating its opponents in the tournament climbs above one coasting on its spring numbers.
Since July 2026 the formula reads:
SquadScore = 35% club form + 5% market value + 15% national-team form + 20% tournament pedigree + 25% tournament form.
Each layer answers a different question, and no single layer can carry a team on its own.
The core of the score, built from individual player ratings over the most recent lineup the coach has actually fielded, the real XI and bench, never a predicted one:
Club form = 0.75 × starting XI average + 0.25 × bench average.
Every player on the call-up list carries a rating built on two variables:
Starter vs. bench classification comes from the player's most recent appearances for the team being scored, not from reputation. If a veteran has dropped out of recent lineups or lost their starting spot under the current coach, the SquadScore sees that shift the next time the squad gathers.
The bench carries a quarter of the layer, well above its share of minutes. Under the 5-substitution rule, teams now average about 4.26 substitutions per game, with the average sub arriving near the 70th minute. At Qatar 2022, substitutes scored 19% of all goals, and per minute they sprint and run at high speed 28 to 47% more than starters. Add in suspensions, injuries, extra time in knockout matches, and the tactical reset the 5-sub rule enables, and the 25% weighting earns its place.
The average market value of the squad, on a logarithmic scale: a squad worth ten times more earns a fixed step up, not ten times the score. It is a small prior that separates deep, expensively assembled squads from thin ones when the rating sample is noisy, and it is capped so money alone cannot buy a ranking.
FIFA ranking points, rescaled onto the rating scale. This captures what the club season cannot see: qualifying campaigns, Nations League runs, continental titles. The Netherlands and Germany are the classic cases, teams whose domestic leagues shrink their club ratings but whose international record says top ten.
Results from recent major tournaments, with older editions fading. Argentina's 2022 title still counts for something; a semi-final run from 2010 barely registers. Teams with no recent major tournament history take a neutral default rather than a punishment.
The live layer, switched on once the 2026 group stage had produced enough matches to read. For every finished match a team banks two signals:
Confidence in the layer grows with each match played, so one lopsided opening game cannot swing the board by itself. And one guardrail applies: a team eliminated head-to-head cannot sit above the side that knocked it out while the two are effectively level. The eliminator gets the nod.
When the tournament ends, this layer freezes as the 2026 record.
One final adjustment sits on top of all five layers: squads with limited data coverage carry a small confidence penalty (a 0.97 multiplier), so thin evidence reads as thin evidence rather than as a strong score.
When you switch to the GK tab, you are asking a different question: which team has the strongest goalkeeping unit? The DEF, MID, and FWD tabs do the same cut for each line.
The naive version would be a simple position-restricted average. It works for elite teams with uniformly strong XIs, but distorts the rest. A mid-table Power Ranking team can dominate a position tab almost by accident, if its weakest position is still high relative to its own XI. The solution is to anchor the per-position score to the team's overall Power Ranking:
The tabs display each line on a 0 to 100 scale. The current leaders:
| Rank | GK | DEF | MID | FWD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | France 84.8 | Spain 88.3 | Spain 85.5 | France 94.4 |
| #2 | Spain 78.5 | Argentina 77.5 | Argentina 85.0 | Spain 84.2 |
| #3 | Argentina 68.7 | France 72.4 | France 81.2 | Argentina 77.3 |
| #4 | England 58.9 | England 69.3 | Portugal 67.4 | Brazil 71.2 |
| #5 | Portugal 49.0 | Portugal 66.9 | Belgium 65.2 | England 65.1 |
Snapshot 2026-07-17. Live ranks at squadranks.com refresh daily during the tournament.
Spain and France split the top of every tab, which matches a board they also lead overall. Argentina sit third on all four lines, the profile of a contender built on balance rather than one elite unit.
When "Limited position evidence" appears on a team card (currently Scotland's goalkeepers), that line has too few players with sufficient minute coverage, and the value shown is pulled toward the team's overall level. A softer "Moderate position evidence" tag (Curaçao, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Tunisia in goal, Iraq up front) marks lines partway there.
The SquadScore measures the team on the pitch. It knows nothing about market expectations, the coach's reputation, or the bracket ahead. The slider on the dashboard bridges that gap by blending the SquadScore with prediction-market probabilities for the tournament outcome.
For the 2026 World Cup, that market is Kalshi's KXWCGAME series, a CFTC-regulated exchange where users trade real money on contracts for the World Cup outcome. The implied probability in each contract aggregates information no single analyst has: coaching reputation, injury rumours, draw difficulty, raw market sentiment.
At 0% on the slider, the ranking is pure SquadScore. At 100%, it is pure Kalshi. The middle is usually the most useful point. The teams where the two signals disagree are the ones worth a second look: a talented squad with a cold market, or a favorite the pitch does not quite support.
During the tournament, the whole board re-scores daily. Tournament form banks every newly finished match, player ratings pull in the latest club and international minutes, and odds are read live from the Kalshi market on the same cadence.
Squad lists update whenever an official call-up changes. We use the latest official list, not a guess at a final roster. If a coach drops a veteran and gives a 20-year-old their debut, the site reflects that the next morning. That is why you sometimes see a SquadScore move a couple of tenths with no big round of fixtures: the list changed, not just the ratings.
Three things the score deliberately does not capture:
That is what the per-position tabs and surrounding cards are for: coach tier, prime window, league diversity, club concentration. The SquadScore is the foundation; the per-position rankings show where the strength concentrates; the slider injects market expectations; and the surrounding cards add structural corrections.
The ratings tell you which teams have the material and, now, which ones are converting it on the pitch. Spain lead France by a thousandth of a point with both converting; whichever of the two blinks first in the knockouts hands the other the #1 slot. Live table at squadranks.com.
