GloryHunt ranks clubs with two numbers, computed only from final classifications (league tables, group tables and knockout brackets) -- no match scores, squad values, player data or opinion polls.
Placement reward. r(p) = p^(-alpha) with alpha = 2*log2(phi) = 1.3885: the runner-up gets 1/phi^2 of the title, and every doubling of the position divides the reward by phi^2 again, so two lost finals are worth less than one title and three are worth more. Clubs eliminated in the same round share the average reward of the places they span (a quarter-final exit is the mean of places 5 to 8).
Field. Each club's strength is estimated season by season from the tables themselves (a Plackett-Luce model on finishing orders, smoothed over time, with priors for clubs below the top flight and for countries whose league is not in the data). A competition's Field sums the strengths of the clubs in its main draw, each capped, against a fixed reference: the top 20 clubs of the 2024 season. Before 1956, when clubs of different countries rarely met, the countries' levels come from their national teams' Elo ratings.
Format factor F. Leagues and cups: (matches on the champion's standard path / 38)^0.5, so a 38-match league is 1.0 and a six-round cup about 0.4. European cups are measured against their own historical mean.
Level factor Lambda. Domestic competitions 1. Continental ones are derived by rule from calibration anchors stated on the Methodology page: the Europa League's median title is at most 0.85 of the strongest league title of its season, the Champions League's is phi^2, the Conference League 0.45 of the Europa League's, the Club World Cup and Intercontinental Cup about 0.3 of a Champions League title. Super cups are worth a tenth of the two titles they join.
Success is the sum of V x r over a period; Efficiency is that sum divided by the sum of V of every competition entered; Edge is Efficiency divided by what an average main-draw participant of the same competitions collected.