Forty years of score-based soccer match outcome prediction: an experimental review

We investigate the state-of-the-art in score-based soccer match outcome modelling to identify the top-performing methods across diverse classes of existing approaches to the problem. Namely, we bring together various statistical methods based on Poisson and Weibull distributions and several general ranking algorithms (Elo, Steph ratings, Gaussian-OD ratings) as well as domain-specific rating systems (Berrar ratings, pi-ratings). We review, reimplement and experimentally compare these diverse competitors altogether on the largest database of soccer results available to identify true leaders. Our results reveal that the individual predictions, as well as the overall performances, are very similar across the top models tested, likely suggesting the limits of this generic approach to score-based match outcome modelling. No study of a similar scale has previously been done.