World Cup - Team Ratings

[Clyde1998]

Something a bit different. I used Football Manager's (2017) ratings for players to work out who has the strongest side at this year's World Cup. I've simply averaged all the players ratings (out of 200) for each player in each team's squad.

For some context, the Scotland squad for our last qualifiers scored an average of 127.3.

1. Spain - 156.9
2. Germany - 156.6
3. Brazil - 154.4
4. Argentina - 150.7
5. Belgium - 148.0
6. France - 147.3
7. Portugal - 147.3
8. Croatia - 143.4
9. England - 141.1
10. Uruguay - 139.7
11. Mexico - 137.5
12. Colombia - 136.5
13. Switzerland - 135.3
14. Denmark - 132.7
15. Poland - 131.1
16. Sweden - 130.9
17. Senegal - 129.1
18. Serbia - 129.0
19. Japan - 128.7
20. Russia - 127.6
21. Morocco - 124.7
22. Peru - 123.6
23. Costa Rica - 120.1
24. Nigeria - 119.7
25. South Korea - 119.6
26. Iceland - 119.2
27. Australia - 117.3
28. Egypt - 115.3
29. Iran - 113.3
30. Tunisia - 112.9
31. Panama - 107.6
32. Saudi Arabia - 102.7

I'm using the 2017 version of the game, rather than 2018 - so some of the individual ratings may have changed (particularly for younger players). I feel that this gives a fairly good guide as to how strong each team is going into the World Cup.

For further context, Saudi Arabia are slightly worse than St Johnstone (102.9), Panama are around the level of Aberdeen (108.1) and Morocco are about as good as Celtic (125.3).

Selected others (based on previous competitive squad):

• Italy - 150.3
• Netherlands - 137.7
• Ireland - 129.0
• Wales - 127.4
• Scotland - 127.3
• United States - 126.1
• Northern Ireland - 115.5