Which men’s football leagues are truly the strongest in the world? And who’s playing at a higher level right now – Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo? The Opta Power Rankings offer a data-driven view that helps answer both.
This article is an updated version of a feature we originally published in October. If you’d like to compare the current landscape to how things looked earlier in the season, you can read that original piece here.
With the 2024-25 season now wrapped up, we have a complete picture of how the clubs from the world’s top football leagues performed over the past year. That makes it the perfect time to re-examine the global football hierarchy through the lens of the Opta Power Rankings.
For those unfamiliar, the Opta Power Rankings assess and rate over 15,000 men’s and women’s teams across the globe based on advanced performance metrics. From this, we can identify which leagues are home to the highest concentration of elite clubs – a useful indicator of overall league strength. For a deeper explainer and a chance to analyse every team for yourself, visit the below link:
Opta Power Rankings Explained
FootballOpta Power Rankings: Who Are the Best Football Teams in the World?
10 months ago Peter McKeeverWith a full campaign’s worth of data now available, it’s time to revisit the major takeaways. So, what do the latest Opta Power Rankings tell us about the strongest leagues in world football?
Top Five Leagues
The concept of the ‘top five European leagues’ is now well-ingrained in the sport’s vocabulary. These competitions – based in England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France – have historically dominated both on the pitch and financially.
While other leagues occasionally produce breakout teams or climb the UEFA coefficients, the Opta Power Rankings continue to reflect this long-standing order – though not without nuance.
In truth, the term ‘Big Five’ might be outdated. The Premier League stands in a class of its own, underpinned by unmatched commercial power and depth of quality. And as expected, England’s top flight once again tops the global rankings in terms of overall league strength.
The average team rating of the 20 Premier League clubs that will play in the 2025-26 competition on a scale of zero to 100 (where 100 is the best-ranked team in the world and zero is the worst) is 92.6.
That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, considering that three Premier League clubs are currently within the top four of the global club rankings: Liverpool (1st, 100.0), Arsenal (2nd, 99.5) and Manchester City (4th, 98.6).
The Premier League is also helped by welcoming back Burnley after a one-year absence, and Leeds United after two years in the Championship. Both sides collected 100 points in the English second tier last season – the first time in English league history that two teams have won as many as 100 points in the same division.
The average quality of the clubs that will make up Serie A and La Liga (minus one team, with the Segunda Liga play-offs not completed until 21 June) is exactly the same at 87.0, which is just ahead of the Bundesliga’s 86.3 average.
Ligue 1 sits in fifth place (85.5) despite having the reigning UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain. The main issue is that the gap between PSG and Ligue 1’s second best side in the Opta Power Rankings is nine ratings points (PSG: 99.3, Lille: 90.3). None of the other major leagues have a gap of more than 5.1 between their highest ranked and second-highest ranked sides.
Top 30 Leagues Across the World
As you might expect, European competitions dominate the rankings for the best 10 top-tier leagues in world football according to the Opta Power Rankings.
However, the Brazilian Serie A – or the Campeonato Brasileirão – is the highest-ranked non-European league in the world, sitting in ninth.
With Brasileirão clubs having an average Opta Power Rating of 79.4, the league’s average ranks higher than the the Dutch Eredivisie (78.8) and just below the Portuguese Primeira Liga (79.8).
Botafogo may have won their first Copa Libertadores title in November, beating fellow Brazilian side Atlético Mineiro in the final, and then sealed their domestic league title a month later, but they are currently the third highest side from Brazil in the Opta Power Rankings (118th), behind Flamengo (78th) and Palmeiras (74th). They currently sit sixth in the league table and six points behind leaders Flamengo, while they lost two of their six group games in the 2025 Copa Libertadores. Their poor performance in the 2025 Campeonato Carioca hit their Opta Power Rating, too.
The second non-European league among the 10 highest-rated top-tier competitions is now the Argentine Primera División, which is 11th in the overall league rankings when considering all clubs currently in the competition. It’s dropped one place from 10th from the October 2024 update, but the average Opta Power Rating has increased from 77.5 to 78.6. This has seen the league jump above Major League Soccer (MLS), which is now ranked as the 12th best league in men’s football with an average Opta Power Rating of 78.5 – the same as regional rival Liga MX of Mexico.
Thanks mainly to their brilliant CONCACAF Champions League crown earlier this month, Mexican club Cruz Azul are now the highest ranked non-European team in the Opta Power Rankings, in 65th. They also collected the most points across the Apertura 2024 and Clausura 2025 seasons in Mexico (75), which has helped them move up the Power Rankings.
Of course, we know that some leagues have more teams than others. This is one of the chief reasons why it’s difficult to compare different leagues fairly. But an alternative approach would be to look at the mean rankings of the teams ranked in the top 10 for each competition.
The top five leagues remain in the same order, but most notably the Portuguese top flight moves up to sixth and jumps above the Belgian Pro League. The Dutch Eredivisie also moves above the Brazilian top division.
Both Sporting CP (23rd) and Benfica (24th) are ranked inside the top 25 teams in the world, while Porto (56th) and Braga (70th) join them in the top 70. The Primeira Liga’s overall average is brought down by teams outside of these big four, though – 11 of the 18 teams in the competition rank outside the top 300 in the Opta Power Rankings, a similar level to teams in the third tier of England.
As the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed, we included the caveat of top-tier leagues in this section. Some of you have definitely come here seeking answers about the English Championship; don’t worry, we shan’t disappoint.
If we analyse the Opta Power Rankings of all clubs in each league – and not just top-tier ones – the Championship ranks sixth overall. This is of course partly down to the aforementioned disparity in quality that certain top-tier leagues have, while England’s second tier is renowned for being extremely competitive.
The situation is exemplified quite well by comparing the Championship with the Eredivisie, which has a much greater variety in ability, as shown below.
The next-highest ranked second tier in the world is Serie B in Italy (18th), which is above the Swedish and Turkish top-tier leagues.
MLS vs Saudi Pro League – The Latest Messi vs Ronaldo Debate
With Cristiano Ronaldo in the Saudi Pro League and Lionel Messi in MLS with Inter Miami, the past couple of years has seen the intrigue around these competitions increase significantly.
With that comes the inevitable – tiresome, you might say – back and forth from Ronaldo and Messi superfans about which is playing in the better league or at a higher level.
Tiresome it may be, but in the name of content, we’re going to lean into it and hopefully provide some statistical context to the debate.
Looking at every club in each competition and averaging out their Opta Power Rating, MLS (12th) ranks much higher than the Saudi Pro League (29th), but when looking at the top 10 ranked clubs in each competition, the difference is less stark (MLS: 12th, Saudi: 17th).
Of the 30 teams in Major League Soccer, Messi’s Inter Miami are currently the fourth highest-ranked team in the Opta Power Rankings (146th), behind Vancouver Whitecaps (130th), Los Angeles FC (126th) and Columbus Crew (116th).
Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr rank above every MLS team in the Opta Power Rankings (106th), with only Al-Hilal (76th) above them among Saudi Arabian club sides.
The top-four ranked Saudi Pro League sides all feature within the top 150 clubs sides in the world, but it’s the lesser fancied clubs that bring the overall league average down. Twelve of the 18 teams to compete in the 2024-25 Pro League rank outside the top 500 clubs sides in the Opta Power Rankings – only six of the 30 clubs in MLS are in that situation.
The overall league competition might be easier for Ronaldo than Messi, but the Opta Power Rankings conclude that the Portuguese is playing his football at a stronger club than his long-term rival.
The Opta Power Rankings
Below, you’ll find the Opta Power Rankings. Use the interactive to find club; you can search for specific teams, countries, leagues and confederations to create your own ranking lists for men’s or women’s football.
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