On the importance of the probabilistic model in identifying the most decisive games in a tournament

Abstract

Identifying the decisive matches in international football tournaments is of great relevance for a variety of decision makers such as organizers, team coaches and/or media managers. This paper addresses this issue by analyzing the role of the statistical approach used to estimate the outcome of the game on the identification of decisive matches on international tournaments for national football teams. We extend the measure of decisiveness proposed by Geenens (2014) in order to allow us to predict or evaluate the decisive matches before, during and after a particular game on the tournament. Using information from the 2014 FIFA World Cup, our results suggest that Poisson and kernel regressions significantly outperform the forecasts of ordered probit models. Moreover, we find that although the identification of the most decisive matches is independent of the model considered, the identification of other key matches is model dependent. We also apply this methodology to identify the favorite teams and to predict the most decisive matches in 2015 Copa America before the start of the competition. Furthermore, we compare our forecast approach with respect to the original measure during the knockout stage.

A comparative study of scoring systems by simulations

“…For example, the importance of Tour de France stages varies greatly (Wilcockson, 2022). Therefore, a simulation methodology can be used to determine the decisiveness of the races, which is somewhat analogous to measuring the role of individual games in a tournament consisting of several matches (Geenens, 2014;Corona et al, 2017). Hopefully, this work will turn out to be only the first step in the comparison of scoring rules via simulations and will serve to foster interest in a significant research question that has been addressed surprisingly rarely.…”

“…For example, the importance of Tour de France stages varies greatly (Wilcockson, 2022). Therefore, a simulation methodology can be used to determine the decisiveness of the races, which is somewhat analogous to measuring the role of individual games in a tournament consisting of several matches (Corona et al, 2017; Geenens, 2014).…”

Tournament schedules and incentives in a double round‐robin tournament with four teams

“…Therefore, the author suggests an entropy-related measure of decisiveness in terms of the uncertainty about the eventual winner prevailing in the tournament at the time of the game. Inspired by this idea, Corona et al (2017) analyse how the identification of decisive matches depends on the statistical approach used to estimate the results of the matches.…”

“…Inspired by this idea, Corona et al. (2017) analyse how the identification of decisive matches depends on the statistical approach used to estimate the results of the matches.…”

Who is the greatest team in Liga MX? A dynamic analysis

“…Mikolajec et al (2013) analyze 52 performance variables for the National Basketball Association (NBA) teams to conclude that primarily offensive factors determine sports performance. Also, Baker and McHale (2015) use a dynamic model to estimate the strengths of football teams based on historical sports results, and Corona et al (2017) modify the FIFA rating using other covariates to predict 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2015 Copa América. Another interesting analysis is carried out by Georgievski et al (2019), who use English Premier League data to investigate what influences the success of football teams by applying factor analysis and a panel data approach.…”