Most youth football tournaments have a group stage with a complete round robin. This means that all teams in the group play against all other teams. In such cases it is very easy to rank teams based on traditional criteria:
- Points
- Goal difference
- Scored goals
There are many reasons why an incomplete round robin works better than a complete round robin. For the tournaments in Flint Fotballfestival it allows a tournament setup whereby matches between teams from the same geographical origin can be reduced to a minimum.
We assume that UEFA had different arguments when they prior to the 2024/25 season changed the tournament setup for Champions League, Europa League and Conference League to a league play with 36 teams.
The main question remains: What is the best way of ranking teams when they have not all had the same opponents? Undisputably, the number of points will be the first ranking criteria, but what comes thereafter?
Fact is that in tournaments with incomplete round robin many teams will end up with the same number of points, especially in the middle of the final table. Therefor the second ranking criterion is important. We developed this tournament setup for our Multi-level tournament and we did not want the goal difference to have more bearing on the final ranking than necessary. In the event that a strong team plays against a weaker team, the stronger team shall be encouraged to secure the victory but not to maximise the win margin.
Example: In a group of 10 teams and all teams have played 5 matches, Team A and Team B have 10 points.
What would be the best way to rank them? Our idea is that the team who has achieved their 10 points against the strongest opponents, shall be ranged higher.
Teams A has played against five strong teams who gained 15, 12, 10, 8 and 6 points.
Teams B has played against five weaker teams who gained 12, 10, 8, 3 and 0 points.
Team A has a Quality of (15+12+10+8+6=) 51 points whereas Team B has a Quality of 33 points. Team A will therefor be over Team B in the final ranking. This even if Team B has a very strong goal difference after winning 20–0 against Team D. Team D was the scapegoat of the group a lost all their matches. Team A never played against Team D.
By using Quality as first ranking criterion after points, we achieve the following: If it is evident for the head coach at half time that they will win the match, then he can secure the win by using the whole squad in the second half. The best players can be rested, because there will come matches later in the tournament when their full capacity will be required. Also for the losing team this has a positive overall effect.
UEFA uses the same criterion described as “Higher number of points obtained collectively by league stage opponents”. In our tournaments this criterion is first after points, whereas UEFA has shuffled them differently.