2022-12-11, 10:37 AM - Word count:
ELO History
Prior to the fifth season of the SSL, I posted an article showing the ELO rankings of all teams in the league. More information about ELO can be found there, but in essence the metric is a form of measurement of how good an entity has performed and what their current "ranking" is among their peers. I missed posting an update for S6 (as far as I remember at least) but thought it interesting to look at it again now when we've had two seasons of the promotion and relegation structure. My assumption is that the ELO rankings will show more of the divisional split than previous seasons.
End of season 6 ELO
Maybe this is getting to the destination before going through the journey, but the final ELO rankings prior to the start of S7 is as follows:
Hollywood has really taken off at the top dominating last season and securely winning their second championship by a large margin. Catalunya has worked their way up to become a consistently top performing team alongside Athênai but the distance to Hollywood is vast.
It is not surprising we see the split between the two divisions just below the 1500 mark, which is the starting value every team gets when they enter the league before their first game. What is surprising is that the bottom ranked team from Division 1 was the one team that stayed up while Sydney and Accra were relegated to Division 2.
The following plots have been scoped to only cover S5 and S6.
Division 1 Teams S5 and S6
At the top of the rankings in S6 we see two different stories. Sydney dropping from first to second last while Hollywood's rocket path is just going higher and higher. Athênai and Cairo has risen from the bottom of the D1 teams to securing their place in the top 4. Catalunya and Tokyo have relatively consistently been performing at around 1600 and 1550 ELO respectively.
Division 2 Teams S5 and S6
Last season's D2 teams have a clear lower ELO ranking than the teams in the previous plot, and the one team that sticks out is Montréal jumping around an ELO ranking of around 1350 while the other teams hover around 1450. The close battle for promotion is also clearly shown in this graph with Buenos Aires, Kaapstad, and Paris all being around the same end ELO. Interestingly enough Seoul coming in 5th is the second highest ELO of the teams.
The fall and rise of Inter London is also interesting, dropping to the bottom team in S5 and winning the majority of their matches in S6 eventually winning the division and promotion.
Expectations for S7
It will be interesting to see where the two new expansion teams will fall after a couple of games and where the promoted and relegated teams will change the structure of the ELO rankings with their first couple of games. I expect London to continue on their upwards trajectory, probably getting some wins here and there against the higher ranked D1 teams. Reykjavik (previously Sydney) and Accra will be an added "boost" to the D2 teams if they lose as their high ranking will result in a jump by the winning side. In D1 Hollywood's dominance needs to be broken at some point and there are multiple teams eager to skip ahead in the standings.
Thanks to @sulovilen