The latest version reveals Liverpool to be the No 1 club in the world. A statistical quirk? Hardly. Manchester United are fifth and Chelsea are only twelfth. Juventus are nineteenth (behind Newcastle United), Barcelona 28th and Real Madrid 30th, behind Cerro Porteño Asunción, of Paraguay.
“The World Club Ranking is a precise classification showing the real level of the clubs free of any subjective influence,” the website reads. “It is the result of a profound analysis that allows us to fairly report the level of international performance.” Except when this “profound analysis” reveals that Liverpool are the best side in the world, surely something is wrong. Liverpool lost 18 times between November 2004 and October 2005, the period for which they were named the world’s best club. They were defeated by — among others — the likes of Fulham, CSKA Sofia, Burnley and Crystal Palace (twice).
“Some people find them a bit strange,” Ian Garland, the Welsh representative on the board of the IFFHS, said. “But the ranking will change month to month . . . and you have to say Liverpool were successful in the Champions League.” Indeed they were. But the best team in the world? Garland concedes that the statistical analysis is only as good as the formula used to establish the rankings. T hat Liverpool, Inter Milan and CSKA Moscow rank in the top six might hint that the formula needs an overhaul.
But this is where facts meet opinion. Dr Alfredo W. Poge, the man who devised the formula, is not bothered with the subjective realm. Poge does not give interviews and shuns publicity. He founded the IFFHS 21 years ago in Leipzig, in the old East Germany. Somehow Poge managed to bring together an international network of statisticians. Perhaps it was this very network of foreign contacts that landed him in trouble with the Stasi, the East German secret police. As he tells friends, Erich Honecker, the East German leader, “showed him the red card” and he moved to the West.
Unlike cricket or baseball, most football statistics are frowned upon. The game does not lend itself to being objectively measured. That is why those Carling Opta statistics often seem absurd (Roy Carroll a better goalkeeper than Petr Cech? Darius Vassell a better striker than Thierry Henry?) And yet the IFFHS’s main goal is a noble one, which makes it rather sad that many know them primarily for their Club World Ranking, which is really just a sideline.
“[The objective] is to log the history of football in all countries,” Garland, who is creating a website on the history of Welsh football (www.wfda.co.uk), including the 90 or so leagues that have existed there at one time or another, said.
Some may find this minutiae tedious and largely irrelevant. Yet there is a lot to be said for trying to preserve the memory of football. As a sport, it is increasingly rooted in the present. We all know that Henry recently broke Ian Wright’s Arsenal scoring record, but how many can recall who held the record before Wright? Surprisingly few, and yet Wright broke Cliff Bastin’s mark just eight years ago. If we do not have some convenient tag to remember great players by, would the average fan still know who they were? Statistics cannot obviously illustrate the genius of a Ferenc Puskas or the creativity of a Leonidas Da Silva. But they can at least log their existence, they can provide a context for their achievements. Leonidas was the top scorer in the 1938 World Cup. Puskas scored an outrageous 83 goals in 84 internationals. These numbers will not be erased. Ever.
And that is what makes Poge’s IFFHS worthwhile, not the silly world club rankings. That is the irony of football. What makes us fall in love with the game is metaphysical: sensations, emotions, memories, aesthetics. But what will help to preserve the memory of the game in the long term is physical: cold, hard numbers.