The SquadScore is the rating each team carries today. It starts from the most recent lineup the coach has fielded, the actual XI and bench, not a predicted one. Every player on that list is scored on their recent performances, both for their club and for the national team, and the result is combined into one team-level number. The question behind it is direct: on current form, how strong is the squad the coach has in hand?
The SquadScore is not a prediction. Nor is it a reputation index. A full-back in great form at Leverkusen scores above a bigger name having an uneven season at a mid-table club. That is the point.
Every player on the call-up list carries a rating built on two variables:
Starter vs. bench classification comes from the player's most recent appearances for the team being scored, not from reputation. If a veteran has dropped out of recent lineups or lost their starting spot under the current coach, the SquadScore sees that shift the next time the squad gathers.
The formula is short and stable across every team on the site:
SquadScore = 0.80 × Starting XI average + 0.20 × Bench average.
Starters play roughly 90% of the minutes in a typical match. Even so, the bench carries more weight than that fraction suggests. Under the 5-substitution rule, teams now average about 4.26 substitutions per game, with the average sub arriving near the 70th minute. At Qatar 2022, substitutes scored 19% of all goals, and per minute they sprint and run at high speed 28 to 47% more than starters. Add in yellow card suspensions, injuries, extra time in knockout matches, and the tactical reset the 5-sub rule enables, and the 20% weighting earns its place.
And the bench matters more the deeper a team goes. A World Cup finalist plays up to eight matches: three in the group stage and five straight knockout rounds. A strong XI with a thin bench can win a group. Surviving five knockout rounds on three day turnarounds is a different problem. And it generalizes to any long cup run or end-of-season fixture pile-up in club football.
When you switch to the GK tab, you are asking a different question: which team has the strongest goalkeeping unit? The DEF, MID, and FWD tabs do the same cut for each line.
The naive approach would be a simple position-restricted average. It works for elite teams with uniformly strong XIs, but distorts the rest. A Power Ranking #14 team can dominate a position tab almost by accident, if its weakest position is still high relative to its own XI. And a top 10 squad's elite defensive pool can be dragged down by weaker line-mates in the same comparison.
The solution is to anchor the per-position score to the team's overall Power Ranking, not to internal averages:
Three patterns this produces on the position tabs:
| Rank | GK | DEF | MID | FWD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | France 6.91 | France 6.82 | France 6.87 | France 7.03 |
| #2 | Spain 6.74 | Spain 6.74 | Spain 6.84 | Spain 6.85 |
| #3 | Netherlands 6.73 | England 6.72 | Portugal 6.80 | Brazil 6.75 |
| #4 | England 6.68 | Portugal 6.71 | England 6.78 | Portugal 6.69 |
| #5 | Argentina 6.50 | Netherlands 6.68 | Argentina 6.74 | England 6.65 |
Snapshot 2026-04-30. Live ranks at squadranks.com refresh on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
When "Limited position evidence" appears on a team card (currently Switzerland and Curaçao for forwards), that line has fewer than two players with sufficient minute coverage. The fallback shows a value computed a different way. Useful as a reference, but not directly comparable to the Power-anchored numbers above.
The SquadScore measures the squad. It knows nothing about market expectations, the coach's reputation, or the tournament draw. The slider on the dashboard bridges that gap by blending the SquadScore with prediction-market probabilities for the tournament outcome.
For the 2026 World Cup, that market is Kalshi's KXWCGAME series, a CFTC-regulated exchange where users trade real money on contracts for the World Cup outcome. The implied probability in each contract aggregates information no single analyst has: coaching reputation, historic form, injury rumours, group difficulty, raw market sentiment.
At 0% on the slider, the ranking is pure SquadScore. At 100%, it is pure Kalshi. The middle is usually the most useful point. The teams where the two signals disagree are the ones worth a second look: a talented squad with a cold market, or a favorite the pitch does not quite support.
Player ratings update twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The update pulls contributions from the latest club round, recomputes each player's season rating, and reapplies the per-competition weighting.
Squad lists update after each FIFA window. We use the latest official call-up, not a guess at a final roster. If a coach drops a veteran and gives a 20-year-old their debut, the site reflects that the next morning. That is why you sometimes see a SquadScore move a couple of tenths in a week with no big round of fixtures: the list changed, not just the ratings.
Odds are read live from the relevant market and updated on the same cadence. For the 2026 World Cup, that's Kalshi's KXWCGAME series.
The SquadScore ranks the squad the coach has in hand. Three things it deliberately does not capture:
That is what the per-position tabs and surrounding cards are for: coach tier, prime window, league diversity, club concentration. The SquadScore is the foundation; the per-position rankings show where the strength concentrates; the slider injects market expectations; and the surrounding cards add structural corrections.
The ratings tell you which coaches have material to work with. What they do with it across five knockout rounds is a different story, and only the tournament can decide that one. Live table at squadranks.com.