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The Curse of Scoreless Draws in Soccer: The Relationship with a Team's Offensive, Defensive, and Overall Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Van Calster Ben

    (Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT-SCD), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

  • Smits Tim

    (Center for Ethics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; and Department of Communication Sciences, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium)

  • Van Huffel Sabine

    (Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT-SCD), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

Abstract

In soccer, a scoreless draw is typically considered as an unwanted result that often jeopardizes the spectacle value of the game. In the present work, we tried to investigate a) how common scoreless draws are, and b) the relationship between scoreless draws and other indices of a football team's performance using machine learning techniques. Using data from 54 competitions around the world, Bayesian networks, least squares support vector machines and Hybrid Monte Carlo multi-layer perceptrons were used to investigate which combination of indices best predicts a team's season proportion of scoreless draws and to see exactly what predictions these indices make. There was ample variability in the proportion of scoreless draws, both when comparing individual teams and countries. For individual teams, the percentage scoreless draws varied between 0 and 30%. On average, nearly 9% of all games ended in 0-0. Not surprisingly, the most important parameter appeared to be the total number of goals per game. More interestingly, the earned points per game were also linked to the proportion of scoreless draws. Games of average and bad-to-average teams more often resulted in a scoreless draw, in particular when the games of these teams saw few goals. Such a team could end up having 20% scoreless draws in one season. A suggestive result that more spectators may be associated with less scoreless draws is also presented.

Suggested Citation

  • Van Calster Ben & Smits Tim & Van Huffel Sabine, 2008. "The Curse of Scoreless Draws in Soccer: The Relationship with a Team's Offensive, Defensive, and Overall Performance," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-24, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:4:y:2008:i:1:n:4
    DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1089
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. M Wright & N Hirotsu, 2003. "The professional foul in football: Tactics and deterrents," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 54(3), pages 213-221, March.
    2. Hirotsu Nobuyoshi & Wright Mike B, 2006. "Modeling Tactical Changes of Formation in Association Football as a Zero-Sum Game," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-22, April.
    3. Alejandro Gaviria, 2000. "Is soccer dying? A time series approach," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(4), pages 275-278.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Jan C. van Ours & Martin A. van Tuijl, 2011. "Country-Specific Goal-Scoring in the ‘Dying Seconds’ of International Football Matches," International Journal of Sport Finance, Fitness Information Technology, vol. 6(2), pages 138-154, May.
    2. van Ours, Jan C. & van Tuijl, Martin, 2010. "Country-specific goal-scoring in the "dying-seconds" of international football matches," CEPR Discussion Papers 7873, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Loeffelholz Bernard & Bednar Earl & Bauer Kenneth W, 2009. "Predicting NBA Games Using Neural Networks," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-17, January.

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