Ryan O’HanlonJul 25, 2025, 06:00 AM ETCloseRyan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”Follow on X
Ryan O’HanlonJul 25, 2025, 06:00 AM ET
CloseRyan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”Follow on X
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It took long enough, butChelsea’s victory overParis Saint-Germainin the Club World Cup final marked the end of the 25th European soccer season this century.
And as my colleague Bill Barnwellrecognized last week, 25 is halfway to 50 and a quarter of the way to 100.
So, he ranked the top 25 NFL teams of the past 25 years, and now I’m here with your ranking of the top 25 club teams of the 21st century.
The way the game is played has changed drastically since 2000. Think of it this way: Oleg Blokhin, Franz Beckenbauer, and Johan Cruyff finished one-two-three in Ballon d’Or voting in 1975. In 2000, the top three were Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, and Andriy Shevchenko.
If you watch highlights from those two eras, the sport barely resembles itself — and the same amount of time has passed since this century began.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t compare teams across the past 25 years. To do so, I’ve looked at every season played across Europe’s Big Five top leagues since 2000. First, I ranked all of those teams by a combination of points per game and goal differential per game, with a 60-40 weighting in favor of points.
Then, I adjusted for league difficulty, based on the average ratings for each league in each of the past 25 seasons from the Club Elo ratings.
From there, I awarded teams with bonus points for winning the Champions League, reaching the final, reaching the semifinals, reaching the quarterfinals, and reaching the round of 16. Based on those points, the final rating comes out to about a 70% weight for domestic performance and a 30% weight for Champions League performance. Given that domestic play isn’t as prone to random fluctuation as the Champions League since the schedules are balanced and there are three times as many games, that feels about right to me.
Now, let’s get to the top 25 of the past 25 years …
-Points per game: 2.47-Goal differential per game: plus-1.68-Champions League: winner
Fittingly, the 25th-best team of the past 25 years is the best team of 2025.
Two other PSG teams produced more points inLigue 1, and four outscored their opponents at a higher rate. But Luis Enrique’s side found a way to do what no other PSG side could do and concentrate their excellence down into the most important part of the season: from March until May.
-Points per game: 2.5-Goal differential per game: plus-1.61-Champions League: winner
Source: Espnsoccer
