Are England actually good under Gareth Southgate or are they just lucky? Analysing the difficulty level of England’s tournament runs helps answer that question. Using FIFA’s world rankings is not a perfect science, with places decided by a points system awarded based on a nation’s results in FIFA -recognised full international matches. Belgium held the No 1 spot between October 2018 and February 2022, but did not win a single trophy.
They do, however, provide a quantitative metric that, at the very least, gives a fair idea of which teams are considered to be the best at any given time. The Euro 2024 final against Spain marks England’s 70th tournament fixture since FIFA’s rankings were introduced. England have competed in 15 major tournaments (eight appearances at the World Cup and seven at the European Championship ) since 1992.
To work out the difficulty rating, we have added up the world ranking of every team they faced in those tournaments as it was at the time, and divided that by the number of games they played at that tournament. The lower the number, the better the quality of the opponent and the harder that tournament was (at least on paper). Here is what the data says.
England’s easiest runs Statistically speaking, the easiest group England have ever had was at the 2006 World Cup, when they faced Paraguay (35th), Trinidad and Tobago (91st) and Sweden (14th). Games against Ecuador (30th) in the last 16 and Portugal (eighth) in the quarter-finals lowered th.
