What the level means

Every league has a level, from 0 to 100, and a player takes his from the leagues he has played in. It is one scale and it answers one question: what standard of football is this? A request asking for level 66 or above is asking for a player whose recent football has been at the standard of Liga Portugal 2 or the A-League, wherever in the world he played it.

Your own player's band is on his profile, beside his position, and the question mark next to it comes back to this page. A request that sets a level floor is checked against his record on the request page itself, before you put him forward.

How a player's level is worked out

From where he has played and how long he played there. Nothing else.

• It is the level of the strongest league he has actually played in over the last three years. The highest, not the average: an average describes a career, and this number is meant to say what standard he has reached.
• A league only counts once he has played 450 minutes in it inside that window, which is five full matches. Nine minutes as a substitute in a top flight is not a standard anyone has reached.
• Cup ties, continental ties, youth and reserve football and friendlies are left out. A fourth-tier side drawn against a Premier League club for ninety minutes has not played in the Premier League.
• Nobody grades the player. There is no rating, no scouting opinion and no judgement of how good he is anywhere in the number.

How a league's level is set

From the market value of the squads that play in it, per club, taken from a frozen three-season record of world football. It is not the division number, and that is the whole point of it: a division number only compares a league with the other leagues in its own country, so it cannot tell you whether a Danish second tier is stronger or weaker than a Finnish first.

England's League Two is a fourth tier and sits at 62.5. The Indian Super League is a first tier and sits at 59.6. On division numbers they are four tiers apart; on the standard of football they are neighbours, and the level is the number that says so.

Roughly what a number means

Read off the leagues, not off the adjective. The band on the right is what a player who has been at that level shows on his profile.

These few leagues stand in for the whole scale. Every league in the reference carries its own level, and a player's number is read from the leagues he has actually played in, never from this table.

The band on a profile

A profile shows a band rather than the raw number, because nobody is usefully described as a 64.3 and the figure moves a little whenever a career is crawled again. The bands name the football, not the footballer: T4 Professional is not a worse version of T2 Top flight, it is a different market, and a club recruiting at that standard wants exactly the players in it.

T1 Elite is the one band that reads something beyond the league, because at the very top the league and the player come apart: a squad player can appear in a top-five league for a season without being a top-five footballer. It needs a top-flight level and a market value that agrees with it. At the other end, T5 Developmental also covers a player there is simply not enough football on record to place, which is not the same as a low standard.

Three things can lift a player out of T5 whatever his league level says: senior caps for his country, a spell at professional level inside the last six years, and a real body of first-team football. A decade of matches is a qualification in itself, wherever it happened.

Why two players at the same level compare

Because the scale is a property of world football rather than of this platform. A league's level does not move when somebody signs up, so no player changes band because of another player. Two men at level 64 have both held down football at the standard of Superettan or the Thai League, in whatever country and under whatever division number, and a club that recruits successfully from one of those leagues can read the other with the same confidence.

What the level does not claim: it says where a player has played, not how well he played there. The minutes, goals, assists and season record on his profile are for that question, and the level only tells you what those numbers were scored against.

Still not sure

If a request's level floor does not tell you whether your player suits it, the request page shows the rule against his record before you put him forward. Anything else, ask us through support.