Operations Research Contributions for Football Teams Formation: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Team formation is a key aspect of football, being able to bring sporting and financial results, but also susceptible to great risks. Considering that this problem involves subjective decisions, it also becomes subject to failures. The use of quantitative approach methodologies can overcome such aspects and offer better results for football clubs. In this context, a systematic review was carried out on Operations Research techniques for player selection and formation of football teams, demonstrating the main references and authors of the area. A search on the scientific bases Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and ScienceDirect was carried out during the month of January of 2018, analyzing a total of 1,637 articles. Of these, only 12 were selected for analysis. The research of Boon and Sierksma (2003) was identified as the main reference of the area, being referenced by four other authors. It is highlighted the low number of citations between the papers, as well as the lack of review articles like this one. All these aspects contribute to the relevance of this research, addressing a significant problem in one of the most popular sports in the world and unifying its main references.

Player selection in football by integrated SWARA-VIKOR methods under fuzzy environment

“…This decision will affect the financial performance of the team as well as its sporting performance [ 7 , 10 , 11 ]. In the strategic decision-making process, scientific and objective methods and management of the process are important [ 6 , [12] , [13] , [14] ].…”

Discovering a cohesive football team through players’ attributed collaboration networks

“…In reality, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of a football team composition result because it may require a considerable amount of money as well as being laborintensive. Fortunately, the emergence of a wide variety of football video games, such as Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) 1 , Electronic Arts Sports FC (also known as FIFA) 2 and Football Manager 3 , offers an opportunity to compose a team based on human preferences and evaluate outcomes efficiently. This opportunity exists not only because gamers can completely redo club designs as well as edit any player in the game but also because the platforms can fully simulate on-pitch football matches.…”

“…Subsequently, the football team composition task becomes interesting and important on the game platforms. As a multiplayer game, the process of football player selection and team composition is designed to select the most suitable player for a particular playing position and role [1], which is vital for clubs to be able to deliver high sports and financial returns [2]. Such a process is crucial since a poor selection result can affect player loyalty as well as cost a football team millions of dollars [3].…”