Chapelier Fou
Sampling and data tinkering
Last friday, Euro 2020, one of the biggest events in International soccer, was kicked off by the inaugural match between Italy and Turkey (Italy won it 3-0). Euros (short for European Championships) are usually held every 4 years, but because of he-who-must-not-be-named, last year’s edition was postponed to this summer, while keeping the name “Euro 2020” (much like the Tokyo Olympics ). 4 5 years ago, for Euro 2016, I basically wanted to try some cool methods based on splines on a real-world example. The mo
The model is built on about 12.500 international football matches played since 2006. The main part actually consists in a combination of two models, one that predicts the number of goals scored by the reference team in a given game, the other one that predicts the number of goals they will allow. This basically models offense and defense for each team. A number of models for soccer have used similar ideas in the past, including FiveThirtyEight’s brilliant Soccer Power Index .
Chapelier Fou