An Analysis of Ranking for Football Teams in Malaysia Super League Based on Football Rating System

Abstract

The analysis of football has always offered great interest and attract many people among experts, researchers, pundits, and fans. Football data have been observed and studied from various perspective aiming for several objectives whether for predicting matches results or goals as well as analyzed team or player performance. This paper presents an analysis and discussion for team ranking in Malaysia Super League (MSL) 2021 based on football rating system. The football dataset is limited to seven seasons of MSL football data between 2015 and 2021, however, the study mainly focuses on final ranking in MSL league table for season 2021 based on football rating system consist of Elo rating, pi-rating and Poisson model. Each of the football rating system presented have their own unique calculation to introduce the football team rating whether as whole team for every round of league’s matches (Elo rating), rating while home or away (Pi-rating) and rating for attack and defense (Poisson model). The football rating system mainly rely on the number of goals scored, goals conceded and match results whether at home and away to be evaluated for rating the football team strength in term of attack, defense, or team as whole. Thus, the findings show that Johor Darul Ta’zim Football Club successfully become prominent football club that dominate MSL 2021. Moreover, it is suggested to include other tier of Malaysian Football Leagues (MFL) as well as adjustment of football rating system for optimization to suit the MFL environment.