ELO Ratings for club and nation reputation

There are websites that rank all teams and nations by their ELO rating. Like here http://www.eloratings.net/ and here https://footballdatabase.com/ranking/world/1 

More about ELO here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Football_Elo_Ratings

Would it be possible to automaticly use these scores for the reputation that a nation or club has in FM so that we have a more dynamic starting grid? Like when Feyenoord and Roma played the Conference League final last season, their European adventure boosted their points but when Ajax, Atletico, Barcelona and Juventus all are already kicked out the Champions League in the groupstages this year, it reduces their points. I don't know if the mentioned websites have an API we could read, or if there are other ways to scrape that information, but I think it would be nice to have a more dynamic club reputation.

Though an ELO rating has no limit, the top teams and nations are below 2200 points. For my own edits I used a *4,5 multiplier to translate that to a 0-10000 score. At the moment I'm editing this manually in my FM, but it takes hours and hours to do only a few hundred teams. Is there a way to implement this in an easy way?

Do you think it has a benefit for the realism of your game, or won't it make any real difference, other than just a different list of top teams when starting the game?

Conflating reputation with elo ranking seems off to me. For example Man Utd could finish 6th for the next 5 years in a row and they would likely still attract better players than a Leicester side who finished 5th 5 years in a row, that's the point of reputation in the game.

I wonder if it could be used for something else but i'm not sure what off the top of my head.

@Footygamer Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Yeah, you might be correct with that. Somewhere things like silverware, history, coëfficiënts, partaking in continental competitions, attendance, fanbase and perhaps even emotion, should have somekind of amount of points that have to count to the reputation. As you say, if Man Utd is 6th for the next 5 years, its reputation still is higher than Leicesters. But, attracting players would become harder for them too. If for example Cristiano Ronaldo is looking for a new team and has the option to play for Napoli (still in the CL) or Juventus (far bigger team, but already out), the chances are he choses Napoli. (not taking into account that he already played continental matches).

The ELO-rating could be a great addition to measure the strength of a football club, but other than reputation, I think we don't have any other viable options where to put it.

Another option is to take the average (or some other mathematical variant) of the ELO-rating and the reputation number that SI gives the teams. But that would mean a hell of job, if I can't export those numbers from the FM Editor to Microsoft Excel.

For now I am continuing my work and am going to run a test to see what it does. 

So I ran a bunch of tests. Edited db, unedited db, savegames with unplayable and/or view only and/or playable leagues.

Some teams get rich almost every time (Czech teams Slavia, Sparta and Plzen // Norvegian teams Molde and Bodo // Greek teams PAOK, AEK, Olympiakos and Panathinaikos // Chilean team Colo Colo), but only teams from the big 5 nations, or the plaable leagues become active on the transfer market. Why does a team have 400M on the bank, but no transfer activity?

Participant in the UEFA Champions League seem to be more divers (with teams from the Baltics, Ireland, Norway, Slovakia, etc), but most teams struggle to advance to the knock-out phase
Winners of the European continental competitions are always from the big 5 nations. Winners of the Europa League and Conference league vary between savegames.

If a league is unloaded (not playable, not view only) it is more likely that a team advances through the stages, than when it is in a playable league. That goes for each of the 6 continents.

In each and every savegame (bar 1) only the original top 20 teams sign managers. This is probably hardcoded. In only 1 testsave I got 4 new teams signing managers. (Freiburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig and LIlle). It is always the case that only teams with a manager can reach and win a continental competition in Europe. Strangely, this restriction is not there in other continents.

I think these files has some potential in the team diversity in continental groupstages and the winners of continental cups. Needs more finetuning though. Perhaps giving a higher reputation to every 1st level league (tried some, but didn't work yet) or some other edits.

Anyone got suggestions?

Also, as there are lots of great editor files here, what is your way of setting up a test save? Which leagues do you use for something that potentially influences the entire FM world? How many years do you test? 

Use this file it is very good and a new FM23 version will soon be available 👍

https://sortitoutsi.net/content/59366/fm22-increase-realism-megapack

@Qvordrup Yes, I already do, and it adds a lot the the realism. But what I want is to have two things:

1. More variation in participants and winners of the continental competitions
2. And more teams signing new managers and being able to win continental cups.

The first might not be realistic as it doesn't happen in real life, but I like the variation. I want to make it so that it still could happen/feels real.

The second is probably hardcoded and needs a workaround, if possible, as it totally messes with the immersion when you play savegames of more than a decade.

I couldnt agree more and I revamp the UEFA comps totally

every nation submits 2 teams max into 4 comps UCL/Europa/Conference/Intertoto [so 8 teams get European football from every UEFA country]

no qualifiers larger groups then straight KO rounds with lower rated team getting home advantage, just testing in FM23. But in FM22 saw what would be considered unlikely winners of the comps especially over a few seasons the smaller nations grew and it levels out

1

also have a super cup for winners of conference v intertoto

stringent squad/match day rules also kick in with high numbers of home nation players having to make up the squad + lower non EU players  I usually give it a season or 2 before increasing these rules, you then see even ‘big clubs’ not  doing so well

havent got any save games to check back on  but have this, take a look at the teams making the semi finals of UCL

@kingrobbo  We're on the same page. What unlikely winners did you see? Were those leagues playable, or when they were unplayable, did those teams still have a manager?

In my opinion, in essence, the best teams of the continent should play in the Champions League. That can be winners and really strong teams together. Everyone sees that City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal are far better than Molde, AEK, Zalgiris and Valletta. And because of that I don't mind seeing PSG, Juve and Bayern, battle it out with the other top teams in the knock-out phase. Seeing world class teams and world class players is part of the fun too. They also generate the most money. But that doesn't have to mean that the champions of Sweden, Belgium, Croatia, Poland or Cyprus are not getting a piece of the pie. Therefor I liked to try to change it for myself and I like the things you and other people make to see a bit of a change. Perhaps the biggest teams shouldn't think about a Superleague, but the UEFA should think about a 4th level of European Cups, as you have made too.

I holiday'd until november 2032, with 120 nations. I really hoped that my ELO-to-reputation-ratio made a bigger impact. That teams would use that higher reputation to their benefit. It seems that it's doing something, as smaller nations generate really big money, but those teams do far to less with their new possibilties. For example Velez (Argentina) is the 2nd richest team in the world right now. They win lots of national titles, but perform badly in the Libertadores and only sell youth players. RB Salzburg is the richest team in the world. Once in a while they buy a player, but most of the time you can hear the crickets chirping. They win the Austrian League lots of times, but are just rubbish in the CL. Strange thing is that when view-only, the impact is less than when a league is not playable at all so it seems. 

That still is as it is in really life. I can live with that. But what I really really dislike the most of FM is that teams don't sign new managers. Teams without managers are pretty dead. They are hardcoded to never reach a continental final and therefor never win it. That means that Anderlecht and Celtic can never grow to outperform Real Madrid if you haven't loaded those 2 leagues. Only once every few holiday tests I see a few teams breaking this hardcoded limit, but that are very small exceptions. If this isn't hardcoded, than I haven't found out why/how. If this is hardcoded as I suspect it is, then I have no clue why you should do that. I can't be the only one playing 20/30 years or more to notice this. What puzzles me a lot is why this isn't the case in the other continents.

@Jorgen There is only one solution to your problem. Add this file when a FM23 version is available: 

https://sortitoutsi.net/content/59359/fm22-aroundtheglobe-megapack-by-davetheeditor-release-30112021

And then load as many leagues as “playable” or “view only” as your computer can manage 🙂 

@Qvordrup thanks! That's one of the things I always add to my game. (or the ones by Claassen and/or Timo before that). With a 7 year old laptop I can't run all those leagues at the same time. When I have about 20 divisions and 80k players it's still snappy and fast. But with each extra nations it'll get slower.

Did a crazy test with about 15 - 20 teams per continent with a rep of 9000 and in Europe a few dozen with 9000 and even 9500 rep. just to see how big it's influence can be in potential.
in each and every continent there was a change in strong teams/nations and far more teams buy players (like Kylian Mbappé to FC Andorra) and get new managers! (teams from Bolivia, Venezuela and Mali, did too) So it's good to know that even when teams are from minor / smaller leagues and even if those leagues are unplayable, that those ratings matter. However, if those teams not perform well, or if they lack continental football, their rating wil decrease over time. Some keep it for a while, some loose their reputation, but some will be stable too.

Now i'm gonna think about what I'm gonna do with the normal files. Just use/release, knowing that a higher rep has a real influence, but as long as it's comparable with the normal ratings, the influence takes time to crystalize. Perhaps that's the best I can hope for teams that get a realistic rating. It won't be Disneyland, it stays real within the limitations of the game.

I think it'll be good to do another normal test to see how many teams sign new manager in a long run, If that is more than the top 20, then it's a win. :-)

As far as I could find out, it seems that in most cases a team needs a combined reputation of at least 150000 (club rep + league rep) to becoma alive/active. That wasn't true in a test were all of the big 5 leagues were lowered in reputation, but after a few years, only 15000+ combined reputation teams were active. (At least in Europe. I've seen Sporting Kansas City become active with a combined rep closer to 14000) If that indeed is the case, then I'd have to edit a lot of leagues to make those teams active, and that could really mess up the balance. And  I don't want that, obviously. so I might quit editing that part - as long as I have no other ideas and just keep using the club ELO files. Which work just fine, as teams from unplayable leagues participate more often in the UCL.

Gonna do a savegame myself now - to see what happens when I'm not holidaying through the years, and to have a bit of fun other than just editing.