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Compared to the streamlined, coordinated nature of club football, international football can seem a little chaotic. Different federations have their own competitions, qualifying tournaments and rules. How a European nation gets to the World Cup is entirely different from how an African or South American nation may get there. And in between each World Cup is a number of continental tournaments that range in importance and relevance.
As such, it can be hard to truly decipher when nations are outperforming all others that don’t happen to be in their specific qualifying group or knock-out tournament. How would we go about comparing the fortunes of England to that of Mexico over the course of 2025? Fortunately enough, Transfermarkt has tallied up all the competitive games that have taken place in 2025 and put together a definitive table of the best performing nations since the start of the year. And some of the countries near the top of the table may surprise most football fans.
As we can see, no nation has won more competitive football games - defined in this table as “points” in the traditional sense - than Morocco. Not only have Walid Regragui’s side won each of their four World Cup qualifying games, but they also won all but one game in this year’s African Nations Championship. As such, they sit top of our list five points above second-placed Honduras, who reached the semi-finals of the Gold Cup and have had an excellent start to their World Cup qualifying campaign, winning three and drawing one of their first four games.
In third place are Mexico, who not only won their Concacaf Nations League final against Canada and then Panama but also went the entire Gold Cup undefeated, ultimately beating the United States 2-1 in the final. They’re joined in third place by African surprise side Madagascar, who not only got all the way to the semi-finals of the African Nations Championship, but have also won three of their four World Cup qualifying games, placing them second behind Ghana in Group I.
When it comes to the big European nations, there are some stand-out names to consider. As we can see, England and Norway are joint thirteenth in the table having won each of their five competitive games in 2025. Portugal and Croatia, who have both played one extra game than the aforementioned pair, also sit level with them on 15 points in 2025 so far. However, with at least two more international breaks to be played before the end of the year, it remains to be seen which nation may be top of the table by the time December 31st rolls around.
However, while England certainly don't sit too high in terms of total points won, they do sit top of the table when it comes to the few unbeaten nations left in 2025. As we can see, Thomas Tuchel's side are one of just 11 nations that have yet to lose a competitive games this year. However, the vast majority of those nations have only played a handful of games, with only Norway boasting as many matched as the Three Lions.
