Examining Influential Factors and Predicting Outcomes in European Soccer Games

Abstract

Models are developed using least squares regression and logistic regression to predict outcomes of European soccer games based on four variables related to the past k games of each team playing with the following values of k considered: 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Soccer games from the European soccer leagues of England, Italy, and Spain are considered for the 2011-2012 year. Each league has 20 teams playing two games with each other: one game is played at home; the other game is played away. There are 38 rounds in each league. The first 33 rounds are used to developed models to predict outcomes of games. Predictions are made for the last 5 rounds in each league. We were able to correctly predict 76% of the results for the last 5 rounds using the linear regression model and 77% of results correctly using the logistic regression model.