Diverse Machine Learning for Forecasting Goal-Scoring Likelihood in Elite Football Leagues

Abstract

The field of sports analytics has grown rapidly, with a primary focus on performance forecasting, enhancing the understanding of player capabilities, and indirectly benefiting team strategies and player development. This work aims to forecast and comparatively evaluate players’ goal-scoring likelihood in four elite football leagues (Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A) by mining advanced statistics from 2017 to 2023. Six types of machine learning (ML) models were developed and tested individually through experiments on the comprehensive datasets collected for these leagues. We also tested the upper 30th percentile of the best-performing players based on their performance in the last season, with varied features evaluated to enhance prediction accuracy in distinct scenarios. The results offer insights into the forecasting abilities of those leagues, identifying the best forecasting methodologies and the factors that most significantly contribute to the prediction of players’ goal-scoring. XGBoost consistently outperformed other models in most experiments, yielding the most accurate results and leading to a well-generalized model. Notably, when applied to Serie A, it achieved a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.29. This study provides insights into ML-based performance prediction, advancing the field of player performance forecasting.