I thought of applying something similar to clubs in Europe, but am finding it more difficult — local traditions and the patterns of the win/loss data over a century of footie are complicating the criteria. Might it be objectively unfair to include Barcelona without including Espanyol, for example? If Scudetti add to the historic accruing of Smug, then Genoa should outstrip Roma, and probably does, in the minds of its supporters. I suspect the Sg Rankings will be far more useful in the case of clubs since it places more restrictions on the sample data wrt time and money and all that.

A – most certainly the German team seem to be unexceptionably nice young men. But as Brian said, you know.

I think Southgate Rankings could be seen as an attempt to capture individual moments in the glacial transitions between Smug and Non-Smug. Incidentally, I think your division of the Euro teams is exactly right, and that one of the reasons a tournament like the Euros is so interesting it that it dramatically increases the possibility of teams moving up and down the list. Portugal could end the tournament in the lower tiers of Smug or well down in the basin of Non-Smug, and while none of the other Smug teams probably stands in danger of demotion, our sense of their relative Smugness can and will change in a way that it doesn’t in odd-numbered years.

Germany had some Smugness taken off them today, I’d say.

Obviously the Non-Smug Teams, on this basis, outnumber the Smug Teams fairly heavily. For me, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Holland are all Smug and look set to remain so, regardless of this tournament’s outcome. I am reluctant to include Portugal because of their relative lack of success and their geocultural overshadowing by Spain and Brazil, but Martha told me recently that 12000 fans recently paid to watch them train; a casual look at their expensive team and high-profile manager might indicate that they are ready to take their place in the sun.

Everyone else remains in the Non-Smug category for now, even the staggeringly well-off Russia and Euro Champions Greece; it remains to be seen if the tournament changes anything for them.

[Supporting one Smug team disallows me from supporting any of the others, but damn those Dutch are a fine lot.]

So the plus sign isn’t based on their recent performances so much as on the fact that they seem to be more imposingly on everyone’s minds even than they were before the World Cup.

I hadn’t paid attention to the trend markings. What is the basis for Germany’s plus sign? They have looked rather unconvincing to me against Belarus and Serbia.

Feelings which are culturally influenced, certainly, which is one reason I’m curious to hear from as many people as possible about their sense of the correct order of the table.

My sense of France when I was putting together the list was that everyone agrees they’re in decline (hence the minus sign), but that they’ve had so much success in the last ten years that they still have a certain aura of strength. I also think their position is unstable, and that they could move significantly up or down depending on early results in the tournament.

How far down would you move them?