How to create your own football league table

Updated February 21, 2017

Setting up a football league table (otherwise known as soccer standings in countries on a certain side of the pond) for your own league--or to follow matches in the English Premier League, Serie A in Italy, or La Liga in Spain--is simple and fun. If you have access to a spreadsheet program, using that will save some time and some arithmetic labour, but it certainly isn't required. The table will show team standings, results and goal differential.

List all the teams on your paper or spreadsheet program in a column on the left in alphabetical order.

Create the following columns in this order to the left of the teams: games played; wins; draws; losses; goals scored; goals allowed; goal differential; points. This is the style for soccer listings globally, though in the U.S., the column for losses sometimes precedes the column for draws. Either is acceptable.

Format the columns. For the wins, draws, losses, goals allowed and goals scored columns, you will simply enter that data and no formatting is required. For points, multiply the wins, worth three points, by three, and add it to the number of draws, worth one point (3W + D = points). For the goal differential subtract goals allowed from goals scored. The result may be a negative number, which is OK. The games played column is the sum of wins, ties and losses (W + D + L= games played).

Input your data and sort by the points column, highest to lowest. If there is a tie in points, the team with the higher goal differential should be higher.

Things You'll Need

  • Spreadsheet program (optional but helpful)

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