The best team at the World Cup won it. Spain conceded one goal in eight matches, the fewest any champion has allowed (the previous record was two), and in the final they took the reigning world champions apart without needing to score more than once. Argentina did not have a shot in regulation time and managed two in 120 minutes, neither on target. "They were better," Lionel Messi said afterward. "To be honest."
GoalPost's Team Power Rating has Argentina first anyway, on 96.9. Spain are second, on 90.4.
I don't agree with that order. I am publishing it because a rating that only ever told you what you already believed would not be worth building, and because when we took the number apart to see why it disagrees, the answer was specific, and a little surprising. The rating has a long memory. What it remembers most is Qatar.
The Table
Top 15 of 215 national teams
GPR rates every national team on its matches from the last four years, adjusted for the strength of the opposition. The attack and defense columns are each team's scoring and conceding rates on that basis, expressed on the model's own scale, a log scale on which only the gaps between teams mean anything (a difference of 0.7 is about twice the goals); a more negative defense number is better. On top of the match record, the model adds a credit for every run in a major tournament inside the window. "Best," in a rating built this way, means strongest across four years of results and trophies. It does not mean the team that played the best football this summer.
| # | Team | Attack | Defense | GPR | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Argentina | 1.93 | −3.01 | 96.9 | The meanest defense in the pool |
| 2 | Spain | 2.00 | −2.25 | 90.4 | World champions; the sharpest attack in the pool |
| 3 | Morocco | 1.47 | −2.42 | 86.9 | Second-meanest defense in the pool |
| 4 | France | 1.90 | −1.92 | 86.3 | Beat Morocco 2-0 in the quarter-final |
| 5 | England | 1.79 | −1.97 | 85.8 | Third at the World Cup |
| 6 | Colombia | 1.72 | −1.84 | 83.8 | |
| 7 | Brazil | 1.87 | −1.61 | 83.0 | Fourth-best attack in the pool |
| 8 | Portugal | 1.75 | −1.66 | 82.4 | |
| 9 | Netherlands | 1.74 | −1.51 | 80.9 | |
| 10 | Japan | 1.64 | −1.58 | 80.7 | |
| 11 | Switzerland | 1.59 | −1.49 | 79.3 | |
| 12 | Germany | 1.71 | −1.36 | 79.1 | The leakiest defense in the top 15 |
| 13 | Belgium | 1.55 | −1.47 | 78.7 | |
| 14 | Mexico | 1.41 | −1.59 | 78.5 | |
| 15 | Uruguay | 1.43 | −1.54 | 78.2 |
Taking It Apart
Where the 6.5 points come from
The obvious explanation is the defense column, and it is real. Over the rating's four years, Argentina have conceded 27 goals in 58 matches; Spain have conceded 43 in 58. Argentina were stingier in every period of that window, and the −3.01 is the best defensive rate in the pool.
But it is worth about one point. Take the trophy credit out and Argentina lead 71.5 to 70.5. Almost everything else, about 5.5 of the 6.5 points, is trophy credit.
Each team carries a credit for every major tournament inside the window, scaled by how far they went, and the credits do not fade. Argentina hold 5.10: the 2022 World Cup, the 2024 Copa América and a runner-up place this summer. Spain hold 4.31: Euro 2024, this summer's World Cup, and a Round of 16 exit in Qatar. The credits are not added to the published score. They set the starting point for each team's attack and defense inside the model's fit, and the match results then pull the numbers back toward what the games showed, which is how a 0.80 gap in credit, worth about 15 points if it passed straight through, ends up as about 5.5 on the 1–99 scale. Both teams have two titles in the window. The difference is 2022. In the model's arithmetic, Argentina's World Cup in Lusail is still worth exactly as much as Spain's at MetLife, and Spain are still credited only for the Round of 16, where Morocco beat them on penalties four years ago.
There is one more quirk, and it is the one I would least have guessed. The model scores every match at 90 minutes, so a knockout tie and a group game are measured on the same clock; extra time and penalties count only through who went through, in the tournament credit. The reason is consistency: GoalPost's match forecasts predict the result after 90 minutes, so the rating behind them is fitted the same way. To the rating, this summer's final was a goalless draw. Count it as the 1-0 it was and the gap shrinks by another 0.8.
The Order Changed in September
And why it widened
One thing a piece like this should disclose. Spain led GoalPost's rating from the day after the final, by seven or eight points, until September 9. Over the next four days, as we changed the model, the order turned over, and Argentina have been first since September 13. Spain did not lose first place because of anything they did. They lost it because we changed the model. The current version looks back four years and gives full credit to every major tournament inside that window, and Argentina's 2022 World Cup came back into the calculation, its trophy credit at full weight. They led by 5.1 points on the new model, and lead by 6.5 now. Most of the widening came in the international window just gone. Argentina won three friendlies 14-0 on aggregate, against Bolivia, Burkina Faso and Benin, while Spain conceded five in four Nations League matches.
So the rating is not wrong about the arithmetic. It is making a choice: that a World Cup won four years ago should count, at full value, until the day it leaves the window. That is a defensible design, and I think the wrong one for a team ranking that calls itself a claim about now. The final is a fact about July. Qatar is a fact about 2022.
Elsewhere in the Table
Morocco, and Colombia over Brazil
Morocco rate 86.9, third in the world and 0.6 ahead of the France side that beat them 2-0 in the quarter-final. Their defense is second only to Argentina's across all 215 teams. They have also not played since July 9 (a friendly against Ghana this month was canceled), so theirs is the number in the table least touched by anything since the summer.
Colombia, sixth, sit ahead of Brazil, and here the trophies point the other way: Brazil carry more tournament credit. The difference is defense, and the raw numbers show it plainly. Over the four years Colombia conceded 38 goals in 52 matches and Brazil 51 in 50; since the World Cup began, it is three in eight against Brazil's seven in eight. Brazil have the fourth-best attack in the pool and a defense, at −1.61, that is why it buys only seventh.
The Trophy and the Number
What each one keeps
Qatar leaves the window around December 18. With no new results, the model then has Argentina on 89.9 and Spain on 86.7: the gap roughly halves, and the order holds. That matters, and it is only fair to say so. The old trophy explains most of the margin, not the whole of the lead. The rest belongs to things the model still prefers about Argentina, their defensive record above all. I disagree with the order, but the case for it does not disappear with 2022. November's matches will decide the rest. Ratings with a long memory are slow to change their minds. They are not incapable of it.
Spain's name is on the trophy, and nothing that happens from here will move it. Argentina's is at the top of a rating that is still, for another two months, remembering a night in Lusail.
Spain took the trophy home. Argentina kept the number.
Argue with the arithmetic. Every team, and both components, is live in the Team Screener, all 215 of them. The Index refreshes as the model does; riser and faller signals return once the current ratings settle.
For the record: GPR values as of October 19, 2026 (team-ratings-v2, national fit of 11:11 UTC), preserved here unchanged; the live Screener will move. 215 national teams rated, 209 with three or more matches and six provisional. Component breakdowns from a read-only re-run of the national model on the same data.
