Are GotSoccer.com and youthsoccerrankings.us rankings worth anything?
- Thread starter JE1212Y
- Start date
YSR gives you each teams record and uses a algorithm to weigh the quality of a teams opponent. In the end it gives you decent idea of who you are playing.
Mystery Train
GOLD
In my experience, the Youthsoccerrankings.com information has been fairly accurate in predicting how competitive matches will be between teams. There's always exceptions, and because club teams so often change and add players or suddenly merge with other teams, it's hard for any system of predicting outcomes to be really great. Because the DA team information usually isn't captured on these systems, you have to take the "rank" of each team with a grain of salt. But if you want something that gives you an idea of how evenly matched teams are, YSR does a pretty good job. GS is worthless in both regards.
Multi Sport
DA
Depends on what software the tournament you are trying to enter uses for rankings..
YSR does get DA scores. 4 of the top 5 teams for 05 girls are DA
TangoCity
GOLD
Rankings are worthless. Only good thing is to see results from (most) their games.
YSR doesn't really do a good job with DA teams. Because DA is a closed league with very few games against non - DA teams, the algorithm doesn't have enough good data points. It works pretty well in comparing the DA clubs amongst each other, but not all that well in comparing them to the other non-DA teams in an age group.
ECNL (and all other teams for that matter) teams play many more games against teams outside of their league so there are a lot of data points to smooth out the noise and YSR works quite well in comparing them with the caveat that it is backwards looking and obviously can't account for roster turnover or injuries.
It is vastly superior to any other ranking system out there. Those guys do a great job.
Surf Zombie
GOLD
A couple seasons ago, my daughters 2007 team was the #1 Got Soccer ranked team in the known universe.
We had played in a ton of tournaments (9 or 10 if I recall) and they had a really good run. While they were a great little team, in reality they were not even the top team in Region 1, never mind nation wide. Two region one teams, Clarkstown & PDA Heat were inarguably stronger teams and our girls lost to both of them down the road. Interestingly both Clarkstown & PDA Heat remain top 12 YSR teams nationwide to this day. While YSR has its issues, it’s light years better than Got Soccer for figuring out how strong any particular team really is. Got Soccer is really just about which teams have gobbled up the most points from winning tournaments that they are affiliated with.
We had played in a ton of tournaments (9 or 10 if I recall) and they had a really good run. While they were a great little team, in reality they were not even the top team in Region 1, never mind nation wide. Two region one teams, Clarkstown & PDA Heat were inarguably stronger teams and our girls lost to both of them down the road. Interestingly both Clarkstown & PDA Heat remain top 12 YSR teams nationwide to this day. While YSR has its issues, it’s light years better than Got Soccer for figuring out how strong any particular team really is. Got Soccer is really just about which teams have gobbled up the most points from winning tournaments that they are affiliated with.
They are fun to look and see who you played and the team you are playing played and if you beat that team and the other team lost to that team you feel you should win.
YSR is better but in the end some regions are stronger or leagues are stronger.
I have seen the we are #1 in the country facebook posts and always think if they played anyone else in the top 10.
YSR is better but in the end some regions are stronger or leagues are stronger.
I have seen the we are #1 in the country facebook posts and always think if they played anyone else in the top 10.
YSR is light years ahead of Got Soccer in terms of accuracy as if you play a Tourney that does not use the GotSoccer software for the standings in a given tournament then those games will not show up in the rankings. YSR on the other hand provides a great insight on trends of teams based on their game history by capturing results from tournaments, league games, showcases... etc.
The YSRs can provide current trends for teams vs RECENT higher and/or lower ranked teams to give yourself a gauge as to what to expect if playing an upcoming game vs a specific team. For example, if a team with a rank "Score" of 39 plays a couple of recent games vs teams with a 37 "Score" but barely beats those lower teams you can expect that the 39 team is trending down. Whereas teams that are playing teams with a higher rank/score are beating or tying those higher teams you can expect a team that is playing at the top of their game. I know of a local team that recently BEAT AND tied the currently ranked #1 team in the nation that is sitting at rank #27 Nationally.
The recent National ENPL Playoffs in Chicago AND the Finals in Denver have not been added to the YSR because the ENPL has not provided the connection/licensing to their game tracking tournament software.
NOTE: Teams must have around 10 games in their recent history in order to qualify to be ranked on YSR.
The YSRs can provide current trends for teams vs RECENT higher and/or lower ranked teams to give yourself a gauge as to what to expect if playing an upcoming game vs a specific team. For example, if a team with a rank "Score" of 39 plays a couple of recent games vs teams with a 37 "Score" but barely beats those lower teams you can expect that the 39 team is trending down. Whereas teams that are playing teams with a higher rank/score are beating or tying those higher teams you can expect a team that is playing at the top of their game. I know of a local team that recently BEAT AND tied the currently ranked #1 team in the nation that is sitting at rank #27 Nationally.
The recent National ENPL Playoffs in Chicago AND the Finals in Denver have not been added to the YSR because the ENPL has not provided the connection/licensing to their game tracking tournament software.
NOTE: Teams must have around 10 games in their recent history in order to qualify to be ranked on YSR.
YSR gives a fairly complete history of most teams including DA and ECNL .
If you are at all interested in whether you are playing a strong or weak team you can get a pretty a quick indication using YSR .
There are hundreds of teams playing in each age group including olders . If your not interested in who you are playing then I guess it's obsolete .
If you are at all interested in whether you are playing a strong or weak team you can get a pretty a quick indication using YSR .
There are hundreds of teams playing in each age group including olders . If your not interested in who you are playing then I guess it's obsolete .
jrcaesar
SILVER ELITE
Yes, and.....YSR makes it very easy to link and unlink records for teams, so if you click on REPORT ERRORS and take 3 minutes to clean up your kid's teams' schedules and opponents on YSR (for instance, if you see an opponent's league games are missing), that will improve the system for everyone else. Even if you just know the team you're on now and the team you used to be on, that helps everyone.
The YSR system seems to have a tough time sorting out SD/Presidio League teams and games beyond the current season, but does a good job with CSL and SCDSL. Where it needs parents/coaches to override is when a coach/team all moves to another club.
The YSR system seems to have a tough time sorting out SD/Presidio League teams and games beyond the current season, but does a good job with CSL and SCDSL. Where it needs parents/coaches to override is when a coach/team all moves to another club.
YSR is obviously better. The two big issues it has are:
1. Sometimes it confuses teams and puts results from Team A for Team B and vice versa.
2. Its ranking isn't actually based on who beat who. It is based on goal differential between teams. So, if your team beat a team ranked 300, which has a score of 20, by 19 points, YSR would think your team should have 39 points. (YSR goes on averages, so this would actually occur if you play the bottom 10 teams and beat them by an average of 19 points). So, it can kind of reward teams for racking up points in a less competitive schedule.
Ultimately, if a team plays an equal number of teams better than it and teams worse than it, it will even out, but that is not always the case. Also, the second point above highlights a lesser issue, which is that YSR can be fairly accurate as far as general ranking, but not as to the point-spread predictions. A team with two points higher will, at the younger ages, usually beat the lower team by 4-5 points.
As an aside, I would let the site's webmaster know that they could save a lot of time by not using U-## designations instead of just birth year. They could have saved a lot of time and effort by using the birth year as the only identifier because currently they have to move everything around when u15 becomes u16. (They have been transitioning recently, and it is screwy.)
1. Sometimes it confuses teams and puts results from Team A for Team B and vice versa.
2. Its ranking isn't actually based on who beat who. It is based on goal differential between teams. So, if your team beat a team ranked 300, which has a score of 20, by 19 points, YSR would think your team should have 39 points. (YSR goes on averages, so this would actually occur if you play the bottom 10 teams and beat them by an average of 19 points). So, it can kind of reward teams for racking up points in a less competitive schedule.
Ultimately, if a team plays an equal number of teams better than it and teams worse than it, it will even out, but that is not always the case. Also, the second point above highlights a lesser issue, which is that YSR can be fairly accurate as far as general ranking, but not as to the point-spread predictions. A team with two points higher will, at the younger ages, usually beat the lower team by 4-5 points.
As an aside, I would let the site's webmaster know that they could save a lot of time by not using U-## designations instead of just birth year. They could have saved a lot of time and effort by using the birth year as the only identifier because currently they have to move everything around when u15 becomes u16. (They have been transitioning recently, and it is screwy.)
Last edited:
Simisoccerfan
PREMIER
The only one that cares about rankings is parents. As your player gets older the ranking become more inaccurate and are really meaningless. Actual game results are the only thing that matters and that is not absolute due to a variety factors including who is rostered that day, injuries, travel etc.
I don't know that most parents care about these much more than players. I don't think I have seen anyone on the forum get excited that their team was "top 5" in YSR or something like that versus top 10, though it can be shorthand for about how good a team is. Posters here seem mostly to care about season and tournament flights/results.
At the end of the day, if someone wants information on a team's game history to get a sense of what level the team plays at or what events it participates in, YSR is a great resource. It helps in sizing up the opponent and managing expectations or in choosing a new team. The ranking itself need not be perfectly accurate to be useful.
Agreed on the above. It's helpful to see who else a team has a played or when their most recent game was played.
But summer and winter tournaments don't really give a clear picture due to guests and/or missing players.
But I think they are both accurate within about 30 places either direction. A team ranked 70th, 100th or 130th on either site will likely have a decent matchup between a team ranked between 70th and 130th.
But summer and winter tournaments don't really give a clear picture due to guests and/or missing players.
But I think they are both accurate within about 30 places either direction. A team ranked 70th, 100th or 130th on either site will likely have a decent matchup between a team ranked between 70th and 130th.
whatithink
GOLD
I agree YSR is better, but the 10 game min is factually incorrect. We created a couple of scratch teams last season across for two tournaments. Both teams played 6/7 games total, ever. They are both listed in YSR (still). They will never existing again.
YSR is still better though ...
Back when I cared about this stuff, Gotsoccer didn't even use league games in their calculations.
Their open forum was my first intro to youth soccer discussions online, until Gavin shut it down because it was too rowdy. It wasn't as good as this one, however, in any of its incarnations.
Their open forum was my first intro to youth soccer discussions online, until Gavin shut it down because it was too rowdy. It wasn't as good as this one, however, in any of its incarnations.