ECNL · 2026–27 season

Pro Player Pathway

Standings & projected finish

The league table from games played so far, plus where the model expects each team to finish after simulating the rest of the season 10,000 times. Click a column heading to sort.
MP matches playedGoals scored–concededGD goal differencePts/G points per game: the table is ranked by this, as ECNL does, because teams play different numbers of gamesLast 5 oldest → newest; hover for the scoreProj. pts expected points at season end

Who beat who

Find a team on the left and read across. Each box is one game against the team at the top of the column, with the left-hand team's score first.
Hover or tap a box for the date, home/away and details. Click a team name to highlight all of its games. The team you follow is highlighted in yellow.

Power rankings

How strong each team looks to the model: goals it would expect to score and concede per game against an average team in this conference, on a neutral field. With only a few games played, these will move a lot.

Results

Completed conference games, newest first. Winners in bold.

Upcoming games

The model's chances for each remaining game. The bar shows home win, draw and away win; the team in bold is the model's pick. Kickoff times are local to the field.
Home winDrawAway winStrong60%+Lean45–60%Toss-upunder 45%

How accurate are the predictions?

Each weekend is re-predicted using only the games played before it, then compared with what actually happened, so the model never gets to peek at the result. "Too close to call" counts as a draw pick. With only a few weekends played, these numbers will be rough.

How the predictions work

Team ratings

Each team gets an attack and a defense rating, fit to every completed game with a Poisson goals model, the standard approach for predicting soccer scores. Expected goals for the home side = league average × home edge × home attack × away defense weakness, and likewise for the away side. Home teams currently get more goals in the model. Each team starts the season from last season's rating, at three-quarters strength: the average of the same players one age group younger and the club's team at this age. This season's results take over as games are played. Replaying this season so far, it lifts correct picks from 52% to 59% (boys) and 55% to 65% (girls).

From ratings to odds

From the two expected-goal numbers the model works out the chance of every scoreline (0–0, 1–0, 2–1, …), which gives the win, draw and loss chances and the most likely score. A small Dixon-Coles adjustment makes 0–0 and 1–1 a bit more likely (and 1–0 and 0–1 a bit less), because plain Poisson models under-predict draws; its strength is estimated from the results so far (currently ). The pick is the more likely winner, or "too close to call" when the two are within 5 points; the margin is the expected goal difference, rounded. The projected finish plays out every remaining game 10,000 times using those chances. Each run also redraws every team's rating within how sure the model is about it, which is wide after a few games and narrow late in the season, so early-season chances don't swing as hard. Checked on two past seasons, this made the playoff and title chances more accurate, most of all early on.

The standings

Tables follow ECNL's rules: 3 points for a win, 1 for a tie, ranked by points per game, then head-to-head (two-team ties only), total goal difference and total goals scored. After every update all tables are checked against ECNL's official standings. On October 2, 2026 every record and position matched for all 1,812 teams.

National rankings

Conferences don't play each other in the regular season, but they meet at ECNL national events (Phoenix, Florida, Las Vegas and others) and the playoffs. Those games set each conference's strength, starting from last season's and updated as this season's events are played. A team's national rating is its rating inside its conference plus its conference's strength. Checked on past seasons, this predicted games between conferences better than treating every conference as equal (correct picks about 50% → 55%).

Postseason chances

Each simulated season ends with ECNL's official 2026–27 qualification rules for that conference and age group: how many teams reach the Champions League (ECNL National Playoffs) and, for the girls, the North American Cup and Showcase Cups. That includes the top teams in each group, wildcards and play-ins. A wildcard spot goes to whichever of two conferences' teams has more points per game, so the two conferences' seasons are simulated side by side. League Cup winners can't be predicted from this data, so a spot that the League Cup winner can take is treated as going to the team in the table.

What it leaves out

Not included: roster changes, injuries, travel, weather, out-of-conference events, and the fact that youth results are noisy. Treat these numbers as a guide, not a guarantee.