World Cup 2022: Rankings
Sports · Soccer · World Cup 2022
Rankings, by Round
I ran my rating engine over Qatar 2022 from scratch, one round at a time, as if the results were landing live. Watch it start as noise — everyone level, the groups unconnected — and sharpen into signal as the bracket links the field. Argentina won it; the rating only worked that out near the end.
The whole arc
Every team's results rating across the seven rounds. The lines fan out from a tight, meaningless huddle on Matchday 1 into a real spread by the final — that fanning is the rating turning noise into signal. Eliminated teams flatten out where their tournament ended. Highlight any side:
Rating is openskill's conservative estimate (μ−3σ): teams start equal and only in-tournament play moves them, so early rounds sit low and undifferentiated by design.
Round by round
The standings as they stood after a given round — results rating (what the scoreboard says) alongside the performance rating (what the underlying play says), with movement against the round before. Pick a round to see its table.
November 2022
December 2022
Highlighted days show the selected round. Bold days have matches. 🏆 marks the final.
Final & Third Place
standings after Dec 18, 2022The whole tournament. France top the results rating, not Argentina — the model scores the penalty-shootout final as the draw it was after 120 minutes, and Argentina's group-stage loss to Saudi Arabia still counts. Argentina lift the trophy; the rating just tips its hat to how close it was.
Fully connected: every team is now comparable through a chain of results, so the ranking means what it says.
| # | Team | Results | Performance | Move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  France | 16.4 | 8.2 ·#4 | – |
| 2 |  Argentina | 15.3 | 18.0 ·#1 | – |
| 3 |  Netherlands | 12.0 | 3.8 ·#14 | – |
| 4 |  England | 11.2 | 13.4 ·#3 | – |
| 5 |  Brazil | 9.8 | 15.8 ·#2 | – |
| 6 |  Portugal | 7.8 | 7.8 ·#5 | ▲ 1 |
| 7 |  Croatia | 7.6 | 5.5 ·#8 | ▲ 2 |
| 8 |  Morocco | 6.7 | 4.9 ·#10 | ▼ 2 |
| 9 |  Japan | 5.3 | 4.0 ·#13 | ▼ 1 |
| 10 |  Spain | 4.3 | 2.9 ·#15 | – |
| 11 |  Germany | 3.8 | 7.5 ·#6 | – |
| 12 |  Ecuador | 3.2 | 6.0 ·#7 | – |
| 13 |  Uruguay | 3.0 | 4.8 ·#11 | – |
| 14 |  United States | 2.8 | 0.3 ·#21 | – |
| 15 |  Cameroon | 2.7 | 4.1 ·#12 | – |
| 16 |  Tunisia | 2.5 | 2.7 ·#17 | – |
| 17 |  Senegal | 2.2 | -0.6 ·#23 | – |
| 18 |  Australia | 1.8 | -0.9 ·#24 | – |
| 19 |  Belgium | 1.4 | 2.7 ·#16 | – |
| 20 |  Switzerland | 1.2 | -1.8 ·#26 | – |
| 21 |  Mexico | 1.0 | 5.4 ·#9 | – |
| 22 |  Poland | 0.2 | -4.5 ·#30 | – |
| 23 |  South Korea | -0.3 | 1.7 ·#18 | – |
| 24 |  Iran | -0.5 | -1.4 ·#25 | – |
| 25 |  Ghana | -1.5 | -2.4 ·#27 | – |
| 26 |  Saudi Arabia | -1.7 | -3.0 ·#28 | – |
| 27 |  Denmark | -2.2 | 1.2 ·#19 | – |
| 28 |  Costa Rica | -2.6 | -4.1 ·#29 | – |
| 29 |  Serbia | -3.4 | -5.7 ·#32 | – |
| 30 |  Wales | -4.9 | -0.2 ·#22 | – |
| 31 |  Canada | -5.9 | -4.9 ·#31 | – |
| 32 |  Qatar | -7.2 | 0.4 ·#20 | – |
How this is computed
Two ratings come off one openskill engine. The results rating is fed the actual result, the move scaled by a capped goal margin; the performance rating is fed an expected goal margin built from the box score (shots on target dominate; possession is ignored; saves are excluded as circular). Penalty-shootout knockouts count as the draws they were after 120 minutes. Teams are ranked by a conservative estimate (μ−3σ), which keeps barely-tested sides humble early.
Every team starts equal — no seeds, no priors — so the Matchday 1 order is close to meaningless, and that's the honest point, not a bug. During the group stage the played-match graph splits into separate clusters; cross-cluster ranks don't fully settle until the knockouts connect the field. The stat weights were learned across the 2018 and 2022 World Cups (128 matches). Every number here is derived from the match records at build time, never hand-typed.
Which group was really the group of death? I ranked all eight →