Calculate ranking with Excel
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head-to-head record

 

Introduction

Determining the ranking within a group usually requires considering several criteria with varying priorities. In the simplest case, these are the number of points, goal difference, and goals scored.

More often, head-to-head results are also taken into account, and these are even used multiple times at the UEFA European Championship and, for the first time, at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Implementing this in Excel quickly becomes an impenetrable tangle of formulas.

This tutorial will introduce an elegant, relatively streamlined, and very clear way to calculate the ranking within a group.

Head-to-head comparisons, in particular, require a lot of effort - especially when there are more than four teams per group. For example, with nine teams per group, my previous tournament schedules used more than 1,000 array formulas (per group!) on the relevant 'Calc' spreadsheet. The method presented here requires understanding only a single array formula, which is used 27 times with nine teams in a group, or 54 times with repeated head-to-head comparisons.

The tutorial is divided into two parts. The first part discusses how to consider the criteria of points, goal difference, and goals scored. This is accomplished using three simple formulas: one with the RANK function, one with the COUNTIFS function, and a third that simply calculates the sum of two cells.

The second part deals with head-to-head comparisons. It examines the criteria order for the 2026 FIFA World Cup:
points, head-to-head comparison 1 (points, goal difference, goals scored), head-to-head comparison 2 (points, goal difference, goals scored), goal difference across all matches, goals scored across all matches, and fair play.

The head-to-head comparisons use a slightly more complex array formula, which is broken down into its individual components and explained in detail.

A basic introduction to array formulas can be found ▸here.

 

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So far the introduction of the tutorial.
Those who wish to continue reading after the introduction can download this tutorial as a PDF file:

 

PDF file with the complete tutorial:
▸Tutorial: Calculating the ranking using Excel (PDF)
Version 1.0 (last updated: 01.02.2026)

 

An accompanying Excel file is available for the tutorial:
▸Download Excel file
Version 1.0 (last updated: 29.01.2026)