Recent Changes
- NEW! 2019 Apr 28: Published individual team pages; for example, KR.
- NEW! 2019 Apr 25: Published forecast data online.
- NEW! 2019 Apr 23: Created preseason Iceland Úrvalsdeild karla ratings and ran simulation with 100,000 trials.
Iceland Football 2019 Forecast
This system is an attempt to model the Iceland Úrvalsdeild karla season, and provides useful insight into the probability of various occurrences in the remainder of the season.
The algorithm projects the results of future matches by simulating them, using data about which teams are playing and where the match will be played. It uses an estimate of the league-wide scoring average derived from 2018-2019 matches to project the average number of goals scored per match, and contains an estimate of the league-wide home-field advantage calculated from 2018-2019 matches. Team-level data (see Power Rankings) are added to this model; see below for explanation about how these are calculated.
The algorithm results in a reasonable model for wins, losses, and draws. The actual schedule is used, and each match is simulated individually. The season is simulated a number of times (currently 100,000), and the results of the simulations are tallied and presented.
Tiebreakers
The algorithm uses the first three tiebreakers correctly:
- Points
- Goal differential
- Goals scored
Europa League
The simulation does not simulate the Icelandic Cup, and Europa League probabilities include only the possibility of qualifying automatically through the league standings (finishing 2nd or 3rd).
Power Rankings
The power rankings algorithm uses 2017-2019 results in Úrvalsdeild karla and 1. deild (including context, like home-field advantage) in order to estimate the performance of each team offensively and defensively. The offensive and defensive ratings are combined to produce a single power ranking.
The power rankings correspond to the relative frequency with which each team should score a goal against each other team. As such, they represent the probability that a team would win against other teams in a golden goal situation. High-scoring teams will tend to have more wins (and losses), and fewer ties. For this reason, given two teams with the same power ranking, the higher-scoring team should perform better in the standings.
Future work
- Add contigent probabilities based on outcome of team's next match
- Add forecast for the Icelandic Cup
- Implement further tiebreakers for Úrvalsdeild karla