GotSoccer Rankings Scoop

The GotSoccer Team Rankings - Understanding the Reality of the Rankings

By: Diane Scavuzzo - SoccerNation News
Posted: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 1:56 pm

America’s Win-At-All-Cost obsessive mentality finds ranking irresistible. The GotSoccer Youth Soccer Team Rankings are often the topic of great debate. In England, there is no system similar to rank youth soccer teams. Are the GotSoccer youth soccer team rankings accurate? How important are the rankings? Who launched the ratings and why?

The person behind the rankings is Gavin Owen-Thomas. Formerly with CNN’s International Desk for twenty-three years, Gavin Owen-Thomas began his career as a professional journalist reporting on sports for the Queenstown Daily Reporter. Along the way, Owen-Thomas’ passion for soccer dominated and this USSF A licensed coach became a familiar name in the youth soccer world as the CEO of GotSoccer; a Tournament and Online-Registration software that is used by millions of players. Reporting on teams standings seems logical in this evolution.

Few people realize Owen-Thomas coached for Bethesda SC in Maryland; coaching teams to 15 State Cup titles. Owen-Thomas was also the Director of Coaching for Arsenal Ladies Center of Excellence.

Even fewer people today know that GotSoccer started as a soccer forum exclusive of software. Today GotSoccer offers software solutions for the soccer world that all revolve around a single database. What does this mean in English? Well, all the software easily connects to each other and shares the same information. Why is this important? It allows reporting the information in different ways easy. For example, when a youth soccer tournament uses Got Soccer’s Tournament software, the information on who is playing in the tournament is easily shared with the other GotSoccer platforms such as the Team Rankings.

Understanding the GotSoccer Team Rankings

The GotSoccer Team Rankings are a powerful tool, which compares and contrasts youth soccer teams from clubs all across America. While not all coaches are enamored with the concept of ranking teams, players and parents eagerly turn to the pages and search for their team.

To be ranked in the top of this fluid and somewhat mercurial ranking system is highly coveted by elite teams. To be ranked Nationally in the top five is a remarkable achievement. Of course, to be ranked top of the Region or even top of the State is impressive.

Speaking with GotSoccer staff, there is certain pride in their voice when they discuss the power and impact of the rankings and how top tournament directors easily review team standings by using their rankings.

What struck me as really odd is how many people are confused about the GotSoccer Team Rankings. Are the GotSoccer Team Rankings the absolute national ranking tool for teams? Is it a business?

While the rankings seem to be a hot topic of information, even those people usually “in-the-know” seem slightly perplexed about how it all works.

It is really rather simple. The GotSoccer Rankings are a service provided for free to the youth soccer community.

Tournaments cannot pay for the service and there is no fee that clubs/teams could pay to get their championship victories ranked in the system.

How do teams and tournaments get ranked? Well, if you use the GotSoccer software, the information (on which teams become champions and finalists) is seamlessly in the software system and the event’s accomplishments are automatically ranked.

What happens if a tournament selects to use competitive software product to run their tournament and online registration?

According to everyone I spoke with at GotSoccer, the company makes every attempt to review which tournaments to include and manually enters the selected champions and finalists. Yes, ranking teams manually is a colossal unpaid for effort.

Are people always satisfied with their rank? According to GotSoccer’s CEO Gavin Owen-Thomas, only the top ranked teams are usually happy, other teams wonder why some tournaments are ranked with certain points more than others.

GotSoccer utilizes a complex algorithm to weight tournaments and teams’ accomplishments. Example? If a teams defeats a State Champion in bracket play, the team will receive extra points. Of course, this only happens in youth tournaments using the GotSoccer software – otherwise only the outcome of the Finals is ranked.

To clear up any confusion with crystal clarity, I interviewed Owen-Thomas.

Diane Scavuzzo: How long has GotSoccer been ranking teams?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: In 1996 I took a team from Bethesda, MD to the San Diego Surf Cup. It was impossible to judge how an East Coast team would fare against teams from the West, and I thought there had to be a way to do it.

A young boy using the name "Ace" from Orange County approached me to publish a list that he put out each month of the top teams in the country and he quickly gained a small following.

Problem was he had a huge crush on a young girl who played for the So Cal Blues and her team was always ranked #1.

I realized there was a market for it, and devised a system based on tournament results. Initially we only used final placements, normally the champions, finalists and semi-finalists and launched the rankings in 1998, manually entering all the results for about 300 tournaments.

Diane Scavuzzo: When did GotSoccer first launch software solutions for the soccer market?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: In 2003, GotSoccer launched tournament software, and we revamped the rankings in 2006 to more fully integrate the two products.

Diane Scavuzzo: How many tournaments use your software?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: About 1100

Diane Scavuzzo: How many tournaments to do you rank?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: In all, we rank 1100 tournaments, about 700 that use our software and 400 that do not. We also rank about 400 soccer leagues, including about 100 that do not use our software.

Diane Scavuzzo: How are your team rankings different than others?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: Between events that use GotSoccer software and the events we add manually, we track over a million games per year. Our rankings are all based on the results of those games.

I'm not really familiar with how other systems rank teams. GotSoccer is the only organization with this amount of granular data. The systems I have seen tend to rely on the opinions of "experts".

Diane Scavuzzo: How many youth soccer teams are ranked?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: Our system calculates the information from 87,000 teams every night. We show the results of over 45,000 of those teams.

Diane Scavuzzo: How many youth soccer clubs do you rank?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: We currently rank approximately 10,000.

The GotSoccer Club rankings, although already being calculated regularly, will be launched in the next couple of months.

Diane Scavuzzo: How can teams improve their rankings?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: By playing teams that are better ranked.

Diane Scavuzzo: Is your tournament software more expensive than the competition?

Gavin Owen-Thomas: Not at all. Most tournament software programs charge for credit card transactions and other hidden costs. GotSoccer charges a flat price per team accepted into an event, and the net cost is lower then most of our competitors. The tournament software is incredible and has revolutionized the industry.

Hopefully this information sheds some light on the issue of why some tournament may not be ranked. The lingering question is how does this impact a top ranked team? What happens if a team wins a championship and does not see it impact their rankings? Or in other words, how does winning a tournament that does not use the GotSoccer software impacts a team’s ranking?

GotSoccer explained that a single tournament should not make a huge impact on a team’s rank. One single tournament would not move a U14 team ranked at 25th to the top three. And this is, of course, true.

GotSoccer rankings have been and still are pretty much a joke. Until they figure out a way to (fairly) include results of leagues and tournaments that don't use GotSoccer for tracking scores/standings, then they never will be accurate no matter how much they refine their algorithms, etc.

off_the_woodwork wrote:GotSoccer rankings have been and still are pretty much a joke.  Until they figure out a way to (fairly) include results of leagues and tournaments that don't use GotSoccer for tracking scores/standings, then they never will be accurate no matter how much they refine their algorithms, etc.

Yes but its the best out there at this time. Would you rather do it like how College Football used to be done with voters/coaches? How about just a sports publication listing their top 100 teams. At least this isnt based on just opinions.

Look at all the flawed systems we have/had in place to determine best teams in sports. Its hard to rank thousands of teams when you only play 10-20 teams in a year and will never play teams from all the other regions of the country. This is by far the best way to determine it right now.

Love it as long as my sons team is at the top:D