A penalty criterion for score forecasting in soccer

TL;DR

This paper introduces a penalty criterion for evaluating soccer score forecasts, prioritizing match outcome accuracy and score closeness, with practical illustrations and alternative penalty options.

Contribution

It proposes a novel hierarchical penalty criterion for assessing soccer score forecasts, combining outcome correctness and score proximity.

Findings

Effective assessment of score forecasts using the hierarchical penalty.

Comparison of different penalty component alternatives.

Illustrations on typical soccer scores.

Abstract

This note proposes a penalty criterion for assessing correct score forecasting in a soccer match. The penalty is based on hierarchical priorities for such a forecast i.e., i) Win, Draw and Loss exact prediction and ii) normalized Euclidian distance between actual and forecast scores. The procedure is illustrated on typical scores, and different alternatives on the penalty components are discussed.