🏟️ The Universal Index
National sides in the international codes on one scale: how far each stands above the best eight in its sport that week.
This week's board
Every side across all codes, with places moved. Pick a code or a continent to narrow it.
How this is measured
Universal = 1500 + 100 × z, where 1500 is the average of the top eight sides in that sport that week. Arrows show places gained or lost since last Tuesday. Under a code filter the first column is the position within that code and the overall position keeps its own column. The continent is that of the side’s own governing body, so Australia sits in Asia for football, basketball, handball and volleyball and in Oceania for rugby, cricket, ice hockey and baseball.
The top five in each code
Position within the code on the left, Universal on the right; each leader's cushion over its #2.
Next up: who is No.1
The chance each leading side holds No.1 when the board is rebuilt next Tuesday.
How this is measured
The No.1 odds replay every game before the next Tuesday ten thousand times through each engine’s update rule, then rebuild the board, decay for idle teams included. Club football’s standing comes from the season ranking, which results move only through the table, so a club’s chance there is an estimate.
No.1 after the update of Tue 20 Oct
Every rated fixture for the next two weeks, with our odds: /predictions/games
Strength now: countries across all codes
Each country's best side per code, summed above the field. Higher means strong in more codes.
How this is measured
Strength adds, for every code, how far the country’s best side stands above the elite-eight mean that week: (Universal − 1500) / 100, counted only where positive, with no weights between codes. Men’s and women’s sides count as separate codes. The United Kingdom takes the best of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Great Britain in each code; the West Indies cricket side adds to no single member. The same places feed the current-strength layer of the Zone Zero Cup, which adds titles won.
Show all 25 countries
All-time peaks
Each side's best week ever in each code, with the date of the week. The filters are the same as on the board above.
Who gets in, and why
A sport is on this board only if eight nations can beat each other at it, because 1500 is the average of that top eight. Only full-strength national sides count.
In: Men's and women's football, men's and women's basketball, cricket, rugby union, men's ice hockey, men's handball, men's volleyball, baseball from 2006, and athletics (men and women together, from Olympic and World Championships finals). Next: women's handball and volleyball.
- Tennis. A national total of Grand Slam last-eight places is too aggregate for a nations board, and the one team competition, the Davis Cup, no longer carries the sport's best. It is rated, and may find a home on the tennis hub.
- Women's ice hockey. The elite is two nations, Canada and the United States, not eight.
- Rugby league. Too few nations play it at the top level.
- Baseball before 2006, men's Olympic football from 1992. Not full-strength sides: amateur rosters before the World Baseball Classic, under-23 teams at the Olympics.
- Olympic medal tables. A medal count is not a team. Olympic team matches count inside each sport instead.
Where these numbers come from
TestedTennis and golf replays conserve points, the national Elo engines are zero-sum and the board ignores code order; no backtest is published. About the tiers
Universal = 1500 + 100 × z. 1500 is the average of the top eight sides in that sport that week, and 100 points is one standard deviation of that elite. The scale is calibrated so a 1-in-1000 week scores the same in every code.
Every code except cricket uses the site’s Elo. Basketball, ice hockey, handball, volleyball and baseball are rated on tournament matches only, so their numbers move a few times a year. Basketball counts World Cups, Olympics, continental championships and, since 2017, World Cup qualifiers; men are shown from 1950 and women from 1957. Men’s ice hockey is shown from 1954: World Championships from 1970 count at 60% where Canada or the United States play, because their NHL players were mostly absent, and the 2018 and 2022 Olympics at half weight for the NHL nations; an overtime win scores 0.75 and a shootout win 0.6. Men’s handball (from 1954) and volleyball (from 1949) count World Championships, Olympics and continental championships, volleyball also the World Cup, World League and Nations League, with the margin in sets. Baseball counts only the professional era from 2006: the World Baseball Classic, the Premier12 and the Olympics. With so few games its scores are pulled toward the average, as for the IPL on the clubs board. In football, friendlies count at a reduced weight, halved again from 2018 once the Nations Leagues took over the meaningful dates; invitational cups count as friendlies, and the men’s Olympic tournament is left out from 1992, when it became an under-23 event. Cricket is one row per nation, blended from Tests, ODIs and T20Is with weights that move with the eras (Tests alone before 1971; T20Is from 2007, gaining weight from 2019), each format read from the site’s ICC ranking replay. A side without Test status is still ranked from its ODIs and T20Is, with its Test share set at the weakest Test side’s level, so associates such as the United States, Scotland and Nepal rank below the Test nations rather than not at all. Its figure is shown as a rating rather than an Elo. Rugby adds the tier-two and tier-three tournaments to the Tests, a newcomer starting at 1100.
Athletics is an individual sport scored as a nation’s total, men’s, women’s and mixed events together. Every final at the Olympics (from 1948) and the World Championships (from 1983) gives 8 points for first down to 1 for eighth, relays like any event. Each championship is then one match between all scoring nations: a nation gains rating for out-scoring the field it was expected to trail, and a nation that scored last time but not this time takes the loss. The boycotted Games of 1976, 1980 and 1984 count at reduced weight; Russia is suspended from November 2015 and neutral athletes are credited to no nation.
A side cannot rise while it is not playing, and after a grace period it fades toward the field. Suspended sides, such as South Africa during isolation and Russia since 2022, carry a “suspended” marker. Names are the era’s own, shown with the flag of the nation. A defunct state such as the Soviet Union or East Germany shows its own flag; a renamed or pre-independence side shows its successor’s.
History runs every Tuesday since 1946, with women’s football from 1991. The current board is refreshed each morning.
Sources: football from the martj42 international results file and API-Football; cricket from the site’s ICC ranking replay; rugby from the site’s rugby Elo and Wikipedia tier-two and tier-three tournament pages; basketball, ice hockey, handball, volleyball and baseball from English Wikipedia tournament pages, and athletics from the English Wikipedia page of every Olympic and World Championships final (CC BY-SA 4.0), one page cited per match or final in the data.