footballgenius.io — Data-Driven Football Player Ratings

Player	Position	Club	Rating	Potential
Jonas Huber	Centre Forward	Lausanne-Sport	54	82
Luca Schmid	Central Midfield	BSC Young Boys	63	78
Marco Silva	Right Winger	Borussia Dortmund	79	92
James Carter	Left Back	Arsenal	82	86
Erik Braun	Attacking Midfield	Bayern Munich	91	91

The Method

How the Footballgenius Player Rating (FPR) works

Most rating systems track on-pitch actions — passes, tackles, sprints — and assume which ones matter. The Footballgenius Player Rating (FPR) does not. It measures one thing: does this player increase the team's probability of winning?

footballgenius was born from a simple question among its co-founders, all avid football fans: whose favourite player truly is the best? None of the existing statistics seemed to settle the debate — so we built a model that answers the only question that matters: does this player make their team win?

Isolate the individual

Advanced statistical methods decouple each player's contribution from team strength, opponent quality, and match context — isolating what that specific player adds.

Compare across borders

Ratings are fully cross-comparable across clubs, countries, divisions, and age groups. A Swiss Challenge League midfielder can be benchmarked directly against a Bundesliga prospect.

Predict the trajectory

After approximately 50 career games, the model reliably forecasts a player's future performance development across their full career arc — not just short-term form.

Career Predictions

See where a player is heading

After approximately 50 career games, the footballgenius model reliably forecasts a player's full career arc — not just their current form. Each graph shows the player's historical rating development as a solid line, and their predicted future trajectory as a dotted line.

Horizontal benchmarks indicate the typical rating level required to perform in each major league, giving you instant context: is this player heading toward Premier League quality, or are they plateauing below that threshold?

In the example below, Riccardo Calafiori's solid line shows his actual rating development — a steep rise from age 22 that brought him to Premier League level. From his current age, the footballgenius model predicts he will continue to improve and establish himself as an above-average Premier League player over the coming years.

Riccardo Calafiori career rating trajectory — footballgenius prediction

Riccardo Calafiori · Career Rating Trajectory · footballgenius.io

Track Record

Before a Ball Was Kicked

Individual FPR scores aggregate naturally into team ratings — a single number capturing the collective quality of a starting lineup, comparable across any league. In May 2025, we used this to publish pre-season ratings for all 12 Swiss Super League clubs. What followed became one of football's biggest upsets of the year.

Swiss Super League 2025/26 · Pre-Season Ratings May 2025

#	Club	Rating
1	FC Basel	72
2	BSC Young Boys	71
3	Lausanne-Sport	67
4	FC St. Gallen	65
5	FC Sion	64
5	FC Lugano	64
7	FC Thun Champions	63
8	FC Winterthur	61
8	Grasshoppers	61
10	FC Luzern	60
10	FC Zürich	60
12	Servette FC	59

Verified — Publicly Timestamped

FC Thun: Undervalued Where It Mattered Most

Market consensus was unanimous: newly promoted Thun would fight to avoid relegation. Their €2M transfer budget was dwarfed by Basel (€18M) and Young Boys (€13M). Even the club's own coach set "survival" as the stated goal.

Our model told a different story. A pre-season rating of 63 placed Thun 7th — but above five established Super League clubs, and within close range of the mid-to-upper tier (only Basel and Young Boys rated notably higher). We flagged this as a market inefficiency in our LinkedIn post published before the season began.

By August 2025, after just 4 games, our season projection placed Thun ahead of Basel and Young Boys by winter break. The season is not yet over — but Thun are about to become Champions. International media have compared it to Leicester City's 2016 Premier League triumph.

We did not predict a title. We identified undervalued squad quality that the transfer market completely missed. That's precisely what the FPR is designed to surface.

Original LinkedIn post — May 2025

Why footballgenius

What makes this different

Action-based models assume that certain on-pitch actions — a key pass, a successful dribble, a tackle won — translate into winning. The Footballgenius Player Rating (FPR) assumes nothing. It lets the data speak.

	footballgenius (FPR)	Action-based models
What it measures	Match outcomes	On-pitch actions
Assumptions about what matters	None	Many
Cross-league comparison	Any league, any division	Limited or unavailable
Career trajectory prediction	Full career arc	Short-term form only
Bias from playing style or position	Eliminated by design	Inherent in the model
Prediction accuracy benchmark	Matches betting market	Rarely disclosed

Insights

Latest from the blog

Data-driven analysis from footballgenius.io

January 13, 2026 · footballgenius.io

The Real Issue at Real Madrid: Squad Quality Over Coaching

The recent sacking of Xabi Alonso as coach of Real Madrid has sent shockwaves through the football world. But the data tells a different story: the problems at Real Madrid may be more deeply rooted in squad quality than in coaching. Using the Footballgenius Player Ratings, we show why Barcelona's dominance this season was entirely predictable.

Frequently asked questions

About the Footballgenius Player Rating (FPR)

What does the Footballgenius Player Rating (FPR) mean?

The FPR quantifies how much a player increases or decreases their team's probability of winning when they are on the pitch. It is a single performance index derived from state-of-the-art statistical methods applied to our database of over two million football games and more than 100,000 active players. A higher FPR means the player has a stronger positive impact on their team's results.

Why is the FPR just one number?

By design. A single, comparable number cuts through the noise of dozens of isolated statistics — passes, tackles, shots, dribbles — that often contradict each other and require subjective interpretation. The FPR distills all of a player's contributions into one question that ultimately matters: does this player help their team win? This makes it possible to compare players across different clubs, countries, divisions, and age groups on a common scale.

Do you not simply measure team performance instead of individual player performance?

No. This is one of the most common misconceptions about our model. The FPR uses advanced statistical methods to decouple a single player's contribution from the performance of the overall squad. The algorithm considers who a player's teammates and opponents are, and evaluates how results change depending on whether that specific player is on the pitch or not. The result is an individual rating, not a team rating — even though the underlying data is match results rather than individual action-level statistics.

What is the difference to other rating providers?

Most rating systems are based on tracking individual actions on the pitch (passes completed, expected goals, defensive duels won, etc.) and then assigning weights to those actions. This approach requires assumptions about which actions matter and how much — assumptions that are inherently prone to bias.

The FPR takes a fundamentally different approach. It does not measure any single action. Instead, it evaluates a player purely by match outcomes, while statistically controlling for teammate and opponent quality. This means no human bias enters the model about what makes a good player. As validation, FPR-based predictions of future match results regularly rival or outperform betting market odds — using nothing but the player ratings of both lineups.

Pricing & Access

How much does access to the FPR cost?

Pricing is structured per country and per division tier. Each country falls into a market-size category (Top 5, Large, Medium, Small, or Micro), and you choose exactly which division tiers to include. You can also select a single regional group within a tier via our Regional Pick option. Full-country bundles, multi-country bundles, and introductory discounts are available. Contact us to discuss a package that fits your needs — we work with clubs and agents of all sizes and budgets.

Can I get a free trial?

Yes. We offer a free 2-week trial with access to the footballgenius player ratings for one league of your choice. This gives you full access to our platform so you can evaluate the product with real data before committing. Book a 30-minute appointment with our team to get started.

Data & Coverage

How many players and leagues do you cover?

Our database includes over 100,000 active players across 350+ competitions worldwide — from major European leagues to smaller divisions in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Coverage is continuously expanding.

How often are the ratings updated?

Ratings are recalculated daily as new match data becomes available. This means FPR values reflect the most recent performances and are not based on outdated snapshots.

How many games does a player need before the FPR is reliable?

After approximately 50 games (typically 2–3 seasons at youth level), the FPR becomes statistically significant enough for reliable assessments and career development predictions. For established professionals with hundreds of games, the rating is highly stable and precise.

Use Cases

How can clubs use footballgenius?

Clubs typically use the platform for three purposes. First, team management: monitoring the development and competitiveness of current squad players over time. Second, scouting: identifying undervalued transfer targets by filtering our cross-comparable database by position, age, nationality, league, and rating. Third, predictions: forecasting future player development and simulating match outcomes based on lineup choices.

Can player agents benefit from footballgenius?

Absolutely. Agents use the FPR to objectively demonstrate a client's value to prospective clubs, identify the right career move by comparing league levels, and spot rising talents early — before market values reflect their true ability.

Can you predict future player development?

Yes. Once a player has accumulated enough match data (~50 games), our model can extrapolate performance trajectories. This is particularly valuable for identifying young players whose current market value significantly underestimates their projected ability. In 2021, we identified 30 Swiss U21 players before their Super League debut who went on to see substantial market value growth — a concrete example of the model's predictive power.

Do you offer custom reports and analyses?

Yes. Beyond the standard platform access, we provide individual reports and analyses tailored to specific questions — for example, evaluating potential transfer targets, comparing squad depth across positions, or analyzing opponent lineups. These are billed separately on a per-project basis.

Technical & Methodology

What data do you use?

The model is built on match results and lineup data from over two million football games. We do not use event-level data (passes, shots, tackles) — the FPR is derived entirely from who played, who they played with, who they played against, and what the result was.

How accurate are your match predictions?

FPR-based match predictions regularly rival the accuracy of professional betting markets. This serves as an independent validation of the ratings themselves: if the individual player ratings were not meaningful, they could not produce competitive match forecasts by simply aggregating the FPRs of both lineups.

Is the FPR position-specific?

The FPR measures overall contribution to winning regardless of position. This means you can meaningfully compare a centre-back to a striker — both are rated on the same scale of "impact on the team's probability of winning." This is a feature, not a limitation: it answers the question clubs actually care about, which is how much value a player adds to the team.

Know which players
actually make teams win.