Cristiano Ronaldo’s form predicted as World Super League model calculates Al-Nassr’s ranking among 4,000 teams

Twenty First Group, a sports intelligence agency, has ranked Cristiano Ronaldo's new club Al-Nassr 308th in the world, on par with Championship teams Luton Town and Sunderland.

In comparison, the Portuguese forward's former club, Manchester United, is ranked 17th in the world, indicating a substantial difference in quality between the two teams.

According to the information received by The Athletic, Twenty First Group's World Super League model ranks approximately 4,000 teams across the world.

The Saudi Pro League, where Al-Nassr play, is ranked 58th in the world in terms of team strength. This is lower than the Scottish Premiership in 49th but higher than Italy's Serie C in 68th.

This suggests that the league is of reasonable quality but not quite on par with the top European leagues.

The weakest teams in the league are around the 3,000th in the world, comparable to National League mid-table teams such as FC Halifax Town and Boreham Wood.

Based on this data, it is reasonable to conclude that the Saudi Pro League is of lower distinction than the top European leagues.

For a player of Cristiano Ronaldo's calibre, however, this should mean that he can expect to have plenty of opportunities to score goals and dominate games.

According to the agency's Chief Intelligence Officer, Omar Chaudhuri (via The Athletic), it is possible to gauge just how well Cristiano Ronaldo will play in Saudi Arabia:

“We can see how players perform when they go across leagues. We can see, for example, when strikers move from Asia to Europe that gives us a sense of relative standards in quality and we can see their goalscoring rates increase or decrease.”

---

Chief Intelligence Officer of Twenty First Group discusses Cristiano Ronaldo's Al-Nassr

The sports intelligence agency Twenty First Group ranked Al-Nassr as 308th in the world, but not without explanations. Their Chief Intelligence Officer Omar Chaudhuri revealed how the model worked to The Athletic.

Speaking about the general model for ranking teams, Chaudhuri explained:

“Within any given league and country, it is relatively easy to work out who the good and bad teams are. You have results on the pitch, you see how teams do when they get promoted and relegated and how they do in domestic cups. You can account for the strength of line-ups and that type of thing."

He continued:

“It gets tricky when you go cross-continent because the teams don’t play each other that much, although we do have the Club World Cup which gives us an indication of the relative quality of South America, Asia and so on."

Then, Chaudhuri went on to discuss Cristiano Ronaldo's new club:

“Relatively speaking, Al Nassr are not that bad, but there is a big drop-off once you start getting outside the top 15 or 20 teams. By the time you get to 308th, you have got Championship-level teams.”