Another way of ranking the international top scorers (II)

There came quite some reactions and suggestions on my first post about another way of ranking the international top scorers. I can only agree with the main criticism: the measure of how valuable the top scorer is, could be better contrived than by calculating the average elo-points of the opponent per goal scored. This measure indeed mainly indicated that some top scorers played mostly weaker opposition.

Some suggested to not take the average but just weigh the goals with some weigh factors. I agree, each goal scored should contribute -more or less- to the total score of a top scorer, not carry the danger that the total score got reduced.

The suggestions about which factors to use to weigh each goal were many:

1 the strength of the opponent;

2 the type of match in which the goals were scored;

3 the difference in strength between the opponent and the team of the top scorer;

4 the teams they couldn't score against (!);

5 the average goals per cap;

6 the number of minutes the top scorer played.

To quantify factor 6 I don't have enough information available, especially for most matches in the twentieth century. Factor 4 was a bit overdone for my taste. I found factor 5 not that important. Factor 1 is kind of included in factor 3.

Eventually I decided to weigh the goals with the factors 2 and 3.

By the way, I excluded the goals Cristiano Ronaldo, Harry Kane and Ali Mabkhout (2) scored yesterday and last Thursday.

To calculate the weigh factor for the type of match I generated 4 categories of matches:

type of match	weigh factor
World cup, continental final, Olympics, Confederation Cup	2
qualifier for WC, continental final or Olympics	1
friendly tournament or Nations League	0,75
friendly	0,5

To calculate the weigh factor for the difference in strength between the team of the top scorer and the opponent I generated 5 categories of strength difference, with the elo rating of a team right before the match as the measure of strength:

elo team of top scorer minus elo opponent	weigh factor
less than -600 (opponent much stronger)	1,75
between -300 and -600 (opponent stronger)	1,25
between 300 and -300 (opponent of equal strength)	1
between 300 and 600 (own team stronger)	0,75
more than 600 (own team much stronger)	0,25

You can see that for both factors I gave a weight of 1 to the 'middle' category, the 'qualifiers' match type and the opponent of equal strength. Easier categories I assigned a weight smaller than 1, goals scored in more difficult categories weigh for more than 1 goal.

I varied with the chosen weigh factors for the categories but that didn't result in a significant different ranking.

So here it is, the resulting ranking with the weighed goals per top scorer and the ratio against their scored goals. Most of them have a ratio below 1, only Ronaldo and Luis Suarez have scored relatively more 'difficult' goals:

name	weighted goals	ratio weighed goals/goals
Cristiano Ronaldo	108,50	0,85
Lionel Messi	91,63	0,86
Ali Daei	83,44	0,77
Sunil Chhetri	77,94	0,84
Luis Suarez	70,00	1,03
Ronaldo	69,13	1,11
Pelé	66,50	0,86
Miroslav Klose	66,38	0,93
Mokhtar Dahari	65,94	0,74
Robert Lewandowski	64,75	0,80
Carlos Ruiz	64,50	0,95
Ali Mabkhout	63,88	0,79
Hossam Hassan	62,94	0,93
Gerd Müller	62,38	0,92
Neymar	62,06	0,79
Romelu Lukaku	61,88	0,78
Didier Drogba	61,13	0,94
Godfrey Chitalu	57,38	0,73
Sandor Kocsis	57,06	0,76
Kunishige Kamamoto	56,81	0,76
Harry Kane	56,50	0,93
Stern John	53,69	0,77
Piyapong Pue-on	53,25	0,76
Robbie Keane	52,50	0,77
Jassem Al-Houwaidi	50,94	0,81
Kinna Phiri	50,88	0,72
Ferenc Puskas	50,06	0,60
Hussein Saeed	49,69	0,64
Abdul Kadir	49,25	0,70
Bashar Abdullah	48,75	0,65
Edin Dzeko	48,75	0,75
Ahmed Radhi	48,63	0,78
Zlatan Ibrahimovic	47,63	0,77
Majed Abdullah	47,19	0,66
Abdul Ghani Minhat	43,56	0,71
Kiatisuk Senamuang	42,44	0,60
Teerasil Dangda	40,38	0,63
Vivian Woodward	39,94	0,53

So, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the most valuable all-time international top scorers after all with the highest number of weighed goals. Let's wait and see if any of the other still active players can come even close.

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About me:

Software engineer, happily unmarried and non-religious. You won't find me on Twitter or other so called social media. Dutchman, joined the blog in March 2018.