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On the design of international match calendar: the effect of “FIFA reserved dates” on European football matches’ outcomes

  • Levi Pérez ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 28, 2023
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Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports
From the journal Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports Volume 20 Issue 1

Abstract

Every season, the international football calendar contains periods reserved for a series of so-called special matches including international friendly or official matches played by national teams. All these periods are called “FIFA reserved dates” in the calendar and generally cause domestic competitions to shut down for some days. Such interruptions of leagues might generate different effects or externalities on the performance of players, clubs or even on the competition itself. While a number of studies focus on the effect of players’ absence on teams performance, this paper contributes to the literature by specifically evaluating the effect of the “FIFA reserved dates” on football outcomes. Using data for four seasons from the “big five” European leagues, I find evidence that the outcomes distribution in those matches played after a “FIFA reserved date” becomes more balanced, thus increasing the uncertainty of outcome. The results of this paper contribute to the ongoing debate about the management and design of the international match calendar.

Keywords: professional football (soccer); international match calendar; uncertainty of outcome; multinomial logistic regression model
Corresponding author: Levi Pérez, Department of Economics, University of Oviedo, Facultad de Comercio, Turismo y Ciencias Sociales Jovellanos, Luis Moya Blanco, 261, 33203 Gijón, Spain, E-mail: .

  1. Research ethics: Not applicable.

  2. Author contributions: The author has accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: The author states no conflict of interest.

  4. Research funding: None declared.

  5. Data availability: Not applicable.

Appendix A: National teams’ competitions

UEFA Euro: The UEFA European Championship (UEFA Euro) is the most prestigious international football tournament in Europe organized by UEFA every four years since 1960. Since its inception, the tournament has featured a qualifying round and a final round. Although the format of the qualifying round has changed over the years, since 1996 it has consisted of a group stage involving up to 55 European teams, of which, in recent editions, a total of 24 teams have qualified for the finals. In this case, the “FIFA reserved dates” considered correspond to the qualification matches (Euro qualifiers).

AFCON: The Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) is a competition of African national teams organized by the Confederation of African Football (CAF). It takes place every two years since 1968 and, since 1979, has included a qualifying phase prior to the final phase. The “FIFA reserved dates” analyzed here include the official qualifying matches, in which a total of 54 national teams participate, from which 22 teams qualify by competing in a subsequent group stage.

Nations League: The UEFA Nations League or Nations League (Nations League) is a European competition that since 2018 has been held on “FIFA reserved dates”. This competition aims to give a competitive character to the friendly matches of national teams that in recent years were losing their attractiveness and interest.

World Cup: The FIFA World Cup (World Cup) can be considered the most important football tournament in the world and has been held every four years since 1930. It consists of two rounds, a qualifying round in which approximately 200 national teams participate and a final round in which the 32 qualified teams compete to become the champion of world football. The qualifying round is played on different continents, and although the format is not exactly the same on each continent, in general terms it consists of a group stage in which the best qualified teams advance directly to the final phase of the tournament, while the second best teams play an additional knockout round against each other to determine the number of remaining participants.

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Received: 2022-05-23
Accepted: 2023-11-08
Published Online: 2023-11-28
Published in Print: 2024-03-25

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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  2. Editorial
  3. Editor’s note: on fairness in sports analytics
  4. Research Articles
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  8. On the design of international match calendar: the effect of “FIFA reserved dates” on European football matches’ outcomes
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https://doi.org/10.1515/jqas-2022-0041
Keywords for this article
professional football (soccer); international match calendar; uncertainty of outcome; multinomial logistic regression model

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Editor’s note: on fairness in sports analytics
  4. Research Articles
  5. Evaluating plate discipline in Major League Baseball with Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
  6. Plackett–Luce modeling with trajectory models for measuring athlete strength
  7. Miss it like Messi: Extracting value from off-target shots in soccer
  8. On the design of international match calendar: the effect of “FIFA reserved dates” on European football matches’ outcomes
  9. Review
  10. Contributions of Carl Morris in sports analytics, a memorium
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