2025 MLS Power Ranking averages, week 1

16 sites published for the opening week of 2025.

by Kreg AsayFeb 28, 2025

16 sites published rankings to start the opening week of 2025. I’ve added several new analytic sites, these may or may not remain since they track all games played (including CCC and USOC) to calculate their ratings. I’ll watch them over the course of the season to see if they’re tracking accurately. Consistently above/below the average would be a good indication.

Many sites from last year haven’t started yet, I’ve kept them listed below, but may start removing them if they haven’t started by week 5 or 6.

A reminder of what Power Rankings should be (not that every site does, of course):

"If two teams played tomorrow, given their current injury concerns, form, and other considerations, who is likely to win on a neutral field? All things being equal, who is the best team going forward, based on what we know now?"

— Richard Farley, NBC Sports ProSoccerTalk. March 11, 2014.

You may notice the inclusion of 'analytic' sites; they serve to function as a 'control group' to others which are based on opinions. There are also sites included that some will argue are 'prediction rankings' - but that also is a form of Power Ranking (see the quote at the top) since it uses algorithms to calculate a team's likely final position.

Bias for or against certain teams are sometimes an unfortunate feature of power rankings. It can be based on their analytic formula, or the raters preference. In some cases the bias can become extreme - If you feel a site got the ratings wrong for your team I invite you to contact them regarding it. Bias ratings for every site are listed below.

I will typically only remove sites for three reasons.

Duplicating / copying ratings from another source on the list.
Failure to update for 6 consecutive weeks. Previous ratings will not be removed, but new ones may or may not be added. I will still periodically check them to see if they have resumed.
Consistently rating far above/below the average. A 1-2 week high/low skew may be normal depending on game results, but going several weeks 5+ ranks from normal for several teams would either show serious bias or algorithm errors.

All the averages use the Olympic method (I.E. Truncated Mean value) of dropping the highest and lowest scores, and then averaging the rest to reduce bias.

The full spreadsheet with all the data is pending…

AVERAGE WEEKLY POSITION

Hover over any line to highlight history.

BIAS RATINGS

No site can be perfectly on average all the time, every site will naturally have a bias for or against all teams.

BREAKDOWN BY SITE The most and least bias by site.

2024 Average Bias

Pending