Opta’s Power Rankings have ranked the top 20 football leagues worldwide.
The English Championship barely makes it into the top 10, which is dominated by the main leagues in European football.
Because Serie B is ranked higher, the Saudi Pro League is left out.
What constitutes a good football league depends on many different things. Does the competition have the highest revenue? Is this division the most competitive? Which one is more likely to make an impression at continental events, or which one has the best players? It is nearly impossible to determine with certainty who should be ranked first because there are so many factors involved.
The term “almost” is crucial here because Opta’s professionals have succeeded in doing just that. The analysts have narrowed down all of the leagues in the globe to the top 20 using their exclusive Power Rankings formula. To get an idea of the relative strength of the competition, they calculate the average power ranking of each team in the corresponding division.
The Saudi Pro League is among the leagues that fall outside of the top 20 since its rankings are based on averages. The division is considered as the 33rd greatest league in the world, even with the addition of Cristiano Ronaldo and numerous other wealthy celebrities.
Top 20 Leagues Worldwide
Rank
League
Rankings
1.
Premier League of England
87.9
2.
Serie A in Italy
86.2
3.
Bundesliga in Germany
86.2
4.
La Liga in Spain
85.1
5.
Ligue 1 in France
85.1
6.
Serie A in Brazil
80.8
7.
Primeira Liga in Portugal
80.1
8.
The Belgian Professional League
79.2
9.
The US MLS
78.2
10.
The English Championship
77.6
11.
Argentina’s Professional Liga
77.5
12.
Superligaen in Denmark
77.4
13.
The Dutch Eredivisie
77.3
14.
Liga MX
77.6
15.
First League of the Czech Republic
76.5
16.
Ekstraklasa in Poland
76.4
17.
Bundesliga Zwei in Germany
76.3
18.
Super Lig in Turkey
76
19.
Serie B in Italy
76
20.
The Swiss Super League
75.9
Top League picture collection
20Swiss Super League
Switzerland
Even though they are playing in this season’s newly formed Champions League, the Swiss Super League, which is home to teams who are well-known to fans of European football like FC Basel and BSC Young Boys, barely made it into the top 20.
The Swiss Super League consists of 12 teams who compete against one another four times a season. Although they have won 27 trophies, Grasshopper is the most successful team in the division. However, Basel and other teams have been dominant in recent years, and they haven’t taken home a league trophy since 2003.
19Serie B
Italy
Serie B, the first of three divisions on this list that are not the top tier in their respective countries, comes after the Swiss League. Three teams in the division receive promotion annually, and certain historic teams have played in Serie B, such as Sampdoria, Palermo, and Sassuolo in the 2024–2025 season.
Palermo and Atalanta have each won the trophy five times, but no team has yet to surpass Genoa’s record of six Serie B championships. The latter’s most recent title win was in 2011, which only serves to highlight how much better they’ve gotten in the intervening years. They are now regular contenders for European football in Serie A.
18Super Lig
Turkey
Even if the national press has occasionally made fun of him, Jose Mourinho has had an impact on the Turkish Super Lig since joining Fenerbahce. They are ranked 18th in these rankings, and as all three teams are headquartered in Istanbul, matches between Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, and Besiktas are always exciting.
The division is already more than 60 years old, and it may come as no surprise that the clubs in the capital city have dominated it. Besiktas has won the Super Lig 16 times, although six other teams have taken home the championship. This is three fewer than Fenerbahce’s 19 victories, which are five fewer than Galatasaray’s 24 league trophies over the years.
172. Bundesliga
Germany
The 2. Bundesliga, Germany’s second football league, which English supporters commonly refer to as Bundesliga 2, is in 17th position. With teams like Hamburg, Kaiserslautern, Hannover 96, Hertha Berlin, and Schalke having all played in the league, the 2. Bundesliga has been a breeding ground for past titans, particularly in recent years.
The 2. Bundesliga has 18 teams, two of which are promoted automatically at the end of each season, much like the football league to which other clubs strive for advancement. Every season, the team that finishes third faces the team that ended 16th in the Bundesliga in a play-off match. The winner of the match either maintains their position or advances to the top flight.
16Ekstraklasa
Poland
The 2.Bundesliga’s ranking drops the Polish Ekstraklasa, which has made some incredible strides in recent months, to 16th place. The home of teams like Lech Poznan and Legia Warszaw was as low as 30th in the same rankings at the beginning of the season, but their enhanced quality has caused them to soar up the table.
With all but four of the 15 titles won since the 1990s, Legia Warsaw is the most successful team in the league’s history. Although neither Gornik Zabrze nor Ruch Chorzow have won the league since the late 1980s, they both have 14 trophies between them. With their most recent 11 titles in 2011, Wisla Krakow is the only other team to have won the league more than ten times.
15Czech First League
Czech Republic
The Czech First League, where Slavia Prague, Viktoria Plzen, and Sparta Prague are vying for the top spot, is three quarters of the way down the top 20. Since the division’s inception in 1993, the Prague teams have dominated it; in the last 32 years, the trophy has been held in the city 21 times, with Slavia winning seven and Sparta 14.
The 2018–19 season saw a reformation of the division, with the top six teams forming a group at the end of the season to contend for the championship. Teams ranked 7th through 10th compete for a spot in the Europa League, while the remaining teams, ranging from 11th to 16th, try to avoid the drop, which three teams may have to deal with.
14Liga MX
Mexico
Liga MX, the first non-European league to emerge, comes after that. It is a modest dip from the pre-season position of 11th for Mexico’s top flight, but it still maintains an amazing standing, demonstrating the incredible advances that have occurred elsewhere in the world.
The Liga MX, which is composed of 18 teams, is divided into two competitions from July to December (the Apertura) and January to May (the Clausara), which correspond to the FIFA season schedule. With 16 titles, America is the most successful team in league history. Guadalajara and Toluca, with 12 and 10 trophies, respectively, are not far behind.
13Eredivisie
Netherlands
The fact that the Eredivisie is in 13th merely highlights its regrettable decline. Since the Eredivisie’s founding in 1956, the major three teams—Ajax, PSV Eindhoven, and Feyenoord—have controlled the competition and have never been demoted.
The league, which was formerly home to giants like Ajax in the 1980s that dominated European football, has seen a sharp collapse in recent years. For football historians, this is especially devastating because Dutch teams are unlikely to return to the top of the game very soon due to financial resources abroad.
12Superligaen
Denmark
Established in 1991 to replace the Danish top flight, the Superligaen, or simply the Superliga in English, is the top division of Danish football and consists of 12 teams. Since the mid-1990s, the league has operated according to its present structure, in which the top six teams advance to a championship play-off at the end of the regular season while the lowest six teams fight to escape the two relegation spots.
Since its inception, Copenhagen has dominated the Superliga, winning the championship 15 times, with only one of those victories occurring prior to the year 2000. AaB and defending champions Midtjylland have each won the trophy four times, while Brondy has won seven league titles, snapping a nearly 15-year hiatus in 2021.
11Liga Profesional
Argentina
The Liga Profesional, Argentina’s highest flight football league, is only 0.1 power rating points ahead of the Superligaen. Since its establishment in the 1890s, the division has had a rich history spanning more than a century. The league features 30 teams, including the well-known River Plate, Racing Club, Newell’s Old Boys, and Boca Juniors.
With 38 league titles from 1920 to 2023, River Plate has been the division’s most successful team to date. Boca Juniors is right behind them with 35 trophies, however they are well behind Racing Club in third place by 17 trophies.
