Predicting Winner of Football Match Using Analytical Hierarchy Process: An Analysis Based on Previous Matches Data

Football as the most popular and most interesting sport in the world has applied the technology to obtain more match data easily. Data analysis in football matches can be used to find out how the match is going and even to predict the winner of a match. This paper proposes the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to predict the winners of soccer matches that can finally predict the champion of a tournament. For one team, six factors and 13 alternative values are applied to AHP method to get the final score that can be compared to the opponent’s final score in a match. To evaluate the proposal, matches in UEFA Champions League 2018 are simulated. Based on the results, the method can give correct predictions on 13 matches, which means the effectiveness of the applied method is 86.67%. The team with the highest final score can be predicted as the champion of the tournament.