Futbol Ranks turns each national team's Elo rating into win / draw / loss probabilities and fair odds for any matchup. Here's the full method, in plain terms.
Elo is a rating system originally designed for chess and widely adapted to football. Every team has a single number; beating a strong opponent earns more points than beating a weak one, and the gap between two teams' numbers predicts the result. We use the well-known World Football Elo model, which rates all men's national teams on one comparable scale.
For a match between team A and team B, we first compute the rating difference, including any home advantage:
d = EloA − EloB + homeAdvantage
Team A's expected result is then the standard Elo logistic curve:
Wₑ = 1 / (1 + 10^(−d / 400))
This number between 0 and 1 is an expected points fraction, where a win counts as 1, a draw as ½, and a loss as 0. A value of 0.75 means "on average team A takes three-quarters of the points available."
Football has draws, so we split the expected result into three outcomes. Draws are most likely when teams are
evenly matched and become rarer as the gap widens, so we model draw probability as a bell curve in d:
P(draw) = 0.29 · e^(−d² / (2 · 350²))
The win and loss probabilities then follow directly:
P(A win) = Wₑ − P(draw)/2 and P(B win) = 1 − Wₑ − P(draw)/2
The constants (a peak draw rate around 29% and a spread of 350 rating points) are typical for international men's football.
Home teams overperform, so we add a rating bonus to the home side — by default 100 Elo points, a standard convention. For neutral-venue matches the bonus is zero. In our 2026 tournament view, a host nation (United States, Mexico, or Canada) receives the home bonus only when it plays inside its own country; all other matches are treated as neutral.
We convert each probability into "fair" decimal odds with odds = 1 / probability. These contain no
bookmaker margin, so they're a clean benchmark: if a sportsbook offers higher odds than our fair number, that side may
represent value.
Elo captures long-run strength, not everything that decides a single match — injuries, suspensions, motivation, weather, travel, and tactics all matter and aren't in the model. Ratings are also a point-in-time snapshot. Treat every output as an estimate for informational and entertainment purposes, not as betting advice.