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Fuzzy-Based Model for Predicting Football Match Results

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 International Journal of Scientific Research in ___________________________ Research Paper .
Computer Science and Engineering

Vol.8, Issue.1, pp.70-80, February (2020) E-ISSN: 2320-7639

Fuzzy-Based Model for Predicting Football Match Results

Omomule T.G.1*, Ibinuolapo A. J.2, Ajayi O.O.3
1,2,3
Dept. of Computer Science, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria

*Corresponding Author: taiwo.omomule@aaua.edu.ng

Available online at: www.isroset.org

Received: 26/Dec/2019, Accepted: 22/Jan/2020, Online: 28/Feb/2020
Abstract- Predicting the outcome of football matches has been an interesting challenge for which it is realistically
impossible to successfully do so for several bettors and football fans across the world. Despite this, there are significant
loss in financial resources expended on the correct prediction of football matches. This paper proposes a prediction model
for football matches using Fuzzy Logic. In the proposed system, results of matches between two football teams are
generated based on the providence of several parameters associated with every football team. Fuzzy Logic Gaussian
Membership function (Gmf) technique is adopted for the computation of membership grade for each input parameter.
Datasets were obtained from the twenty (20) football teams in the English Premier League, 2017/2018 Season and were
used to test the system predictability. The proposed model was implemented using MATLAB version R2017. Evaluation
results showed the practicability of the system to the prediction of football outcomes based on the consideration of many
input parameters for higher prediction accuracy when compared to reported literatures.

Keywords: Football, Betting, Prediction, Financial, Matches, Fuzzy Logic

I. INTRODUCTION

Sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skills in which an individual or a team competes against another or
others for entertainment. Sports activities, which provide social, economic, and political acquisitions as a part of universal
culture, have become an important part of human life [5]. Today, sport is defined as a competitive activity whose rules are
predefined. Since sport enables the player and viewer to experience satisfaction, it has become a field that has attracted the
interest of millions of people [5]. In the long list of Sports, football has become the most populated and sought after event
of all. It provides fans, pundits and spectators undeniable and undividable pleasure from time to time. Football is a game
attracting the greatest number of fans. It is one of the most popular sports with approximately 200 million players in 186
countries registered with the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) [8].

Football is an interesting game that has millions of lovers in the world. The beauty of the game mostly occurs when
football teams get to play a match without the tendency to accurately predict the outcome of the match. Many people have
involved in sport betting with different companies without real profit leading to great financial loss. Several attempts have
been made to create a model that would be able to predict the outcome of the games with good precision; however, it has
appeared to be utterly difficult to succeed in this field [13]. Also various online websites have been designed to simulate
football outcomes but the reliability of their results has not been yielding positive solutions to sport bettors. The heuristic
nature of football is not enough to make valid predictions on different football outcomes. Hence, predicting the results of
football matches is interesting from these points of view by demonstrating the usefulness of various mathematical methods
for making good predictions [11]. Many football fans are interested in predicting the results of football matches. But
predicting the result of a match is difficult due to the high number of factors to be considered. Hence, the complexity in a
prediction systems such as this, is its intrinsic characteristic and the strength of the mathematical approach used to develop
the system. However fuzzy logic is an approach proposed to give high accuracy in a predictive system. It is an approach
that mimics the way a human brain thinks and solves problems [17]. The idea of fuzzy logic is to approximate human
decision making using natural language terms instead of quantitative terms. It is a form of knowledge representation
suitable for notions that cannot be defined precisely, but which depend upon their contexts. It enables computerized
devices to reason more like humans [17]. Fuzzy logic emerges as an advantageous technique among the various available
artificial intelligent techniques in predicting future events [12]. Subjective and Objective modeling are the two types of
fuzzy modeling. Objective type fuzzy modeling is used to build the prediction system. Fuzzy logic has been deployed as
the right algorithm for football prediction because it has mechanisms that can result to higher accuracy and smoother

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control as well. It runs on intricate mathematical models that provide a practical understanding of the overall system [12].
This paper proposes a model that predicts the results of football matches with higher prediction accuracy.
The rest of the manuscript is organized as follows: Section II presents the related works and Section III discusses the
mathematical model. In Sections IV and V, the test data and model implementation are presented. Section VI describes the
model testing, Section VII presents the model evaluation while Section VIII concludes the research work with future
directions

II. RELATED WORKS

In countries where sports betting are legal, sports prediction is as crucial as stock prices. But despite the big interest in
sports forecasting, it has been difficult to find a number of published works on the subject. In a bid to achieve higher
prediction accuracy for football matches, several authors have used different algorithms to make various sport predictions.
The authors in [11] proposed a framework on fuzzy model with genetic and neural tuning for event prediction. The
objective was to predict the result of a football match from the previous matches of both teams. The proposed system
underlines the method of identifying non-linear dependencies by fuzzy knowledge bases. Acceptable simulation result was
obtained by fuzzy rules using tournament data. The tuning procedure implies choosing the parameters of fuzzy-term
membership functions and each rule weights by a combination of genetic and neural optimization techniques. The
possibility to predict the result of a football match using the previous matches of both teams was achieved. However, there
was no account for additional factors in the fuzzy rules, such as home/away game, number of injured players, the numbers
of booked, benched players and weather and climatic conditions respectively.

In [12], a system based on fuzzy logic for prediction is presented to predict the future occurrence of a football match. The
use of clustering algorithm for its computational advantages and fuzzy rules were formed using system identification
techniques. The entire prediction system was implemented using Java. The work provided a football predictive model that
is based on historical data obtained from the web. The work was limited having been tested on a small data set of football
matches. The authors in [15] proposed a model on principles and efficiency of fixed-odds betting markets to forecast
football matches results. They accessed how a statistical forecast model that uses only publicly available information fares
against public market odds in predicting football match outcomes using regression. A rating system which assigns relative
performance rating to teams was used. However, low prediction accuracy and low positive betting returns were generated.
A model that predicts English Premier League (EPL) football matches is introduced in [16] with the objective of achieving
a high accuracy. Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) technique was adopted as the predictive method. Low
feature vector that include large historical football data was as well as other club parameters is evident. The authors in [14]
worked on match result prediction in association football using ELO in order to investigate the use of ELO ratings to create
covariates for match result prediction models. Data were collected from the top four divisions of the English league system
(currently named Premiership, Championship, League One, and League Two). Match results are obtained for 14 seasons,
from 93/94 to 07/08, covering a total of 30,524 matches. The data also include odds which were collected from various
bookmakers during the course of the last eight seasons, for a total of 16,288 matches. Due to the increasing availability of
bookmakers, the odds data are based on a variable number of bookmakers and are collected from various sources. The
ELO rating system is used to derive covariates that are then used in ordered Logit regression models. In order to make
informed statements about the relative merit of the ELO-based predictions compared to those from a set of six benchmark
prediction methods, both economic and statistical measures are used. The quadratic and information loss functions were
used to evaluate the prediction models. Hence, ELO ratings appear to be useful in encoding information on past results. In
the case of association football, the single rating difference is a highly significant predictor of match outcomes. However,
finding the right covariates needed in an ordered Logit regression model in order to create predictions which are on par
with the market odds proved difficult. In [1], a score-time based model for handling deadlocks in football group matches is
proposed to provide a systematic approach to resolve deadlock occurrences in football matches. Score-time-based model,
along with the Unified Modelling Language (UML) model were adopted. The implementation of the proposed model
followed an Object-Oriented programming approach which was carried out using Java programming language. The
research provided a framework for analyzing the impending causes and solution of deadlocks (draw result) in a football
match. Other football results other than deadlock in a football match were not considered. In [2], a model for predicting
football match result is proposed to predict football matches results based on scoring intensity. Dataset was collected based
on the attack and defensive strategies adopted by two teams. MCMC-based technique was used to present and discuss the
scoring rate for each team. The research achieved a prediction accuracy of 95%, but only considered the teams’ tendency
of scoring goals. The authors in [4] presented a framework on the stock market prediction with multiple regression fuzzy
type-2 clustering and neural networks. The objective was to forecast individual stocks or indexes focusing on either the
level (value) of future market prices or the direction of market price movement. Their method involves using fuzzy type-2
neural network to perform reasoning for future stock price prediction. The result obtained showed that network simulation
outperformed the traditional models for stock market price prediction. Also the authors in [3] predicted sports event from
past results by developing a system with the intention of beating bookmakers odds on football. Important features in
predicting football match were examined to calculate the probability of the proposed features needed and identify bets to

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maximize profit. Several Machine learning algorithms were used such as MultiClassClassifier, RotationForest,
LogitbooST, BayesNet, Naive Bayes to classify matches into home wins, draw and away wins. A 55% prediction accuracy
was achieved which was related to insufficient features that affects football match results. The prediction of football
matches results using Bayesian Network Model based on the Barcelona team in the 2008-2009 Spanish League is proposed
in [6]. The intention was to achieve higher prediction accuracy for a team’s performance. Dataset collected were
categorized into physiological factors such as weather, history of five previous matches, results against/for team, home
game and players’ psychological state and physiological factors which include average age of the players, the number of
injured main players, average match in a week, performance of main players, the performance of all players and average
number of goals for all home and away matches. The implementation of the model was done using NETICA software with
a good prediction accuracy of 92% for the adopted factors in the 2008-2009 season matches. In the work presented in [9],
the prediction of football game’s winning rate of two teams using neural network is presented. Statistical data on the teams’
previous football game using the 2006 World Cup Tournament as a case study were collected. The data were preprocessed
and used in training a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) with back propagation learning rule. The output of the model was
compared with the expected output based on the count on victory and defeat for each team. The team with the highest value
won the game. The authors in [10] proposed an improved prediction system for football match result to improve the
prediction accuracy exhibited by statistical approaches. Datasets were extracted from 110 matches played in the 2014-2015
English Premier League season with Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) used to develop the prediction model
using nine (9) football match features. Implementation was carried out using both artificial neural network (ANN) and
logistic regression (LR) techniques with Rapid Miner as the data mining tool. ANN and LR both yielded 85% and 93%
accuracy respectively but the features considered are insufficient. Using other significant time series features and events
such as players’ sales, weather condition, and injuries will affect the prediction accuracy of both models. The analysis and
prediction of football statistics using data mining techniques is introduced in [7]. The research was aimed at solving the
problem of loss of interest in Fantasy Football over a season by developing a point system based on the success of
predictions, which in turn allow buying/auctioning better players. Premier League Dataset was collected as input for
performing prediction, generating statistical information for user profiles and betting module. Also, an internal database
stored all the updated premier league information such as which team won the previous Game week matches, which player
scored the goal and so on, which will not be present in the dataset. A weighted equation algorithm was used which equates
a total score for each team based on its performances in various time frames and many other factors. A score called
“AlgoScore” was computed as a variable score that each team possessed when all the parameters in the algorithm are
considered and equated. It is presented as follows:

Case A: If Team A has an AlgoScore X and Team B has an AlgoScore Y such that X>Y and either team wins;
a user who predicts a win of Team A and Team A wins, gets 100 (the prediction token cost) + (Y).
a user who predicts a win of Team B, gets 100 (the prediction token cost) + (X)
Since X>Y, the user who predicts the weaker team’s win gets a greater reward than the user who predicts the expected
result.

Case B: If Team A has an AlgoScore X and Team B has an AlgoScore Y such that X>Y and the match is a draw;
the user who predicts a draw, gets 100 (the prediction token cost) + Z where Z = (X+Y)/2
The proposed system was implemented on a web portal using Python, JavaScript, PHP, CSS, WEKA tool, Photoshop. The
research used insufficient pre-defined variables. Incorporation of additional variables in real life scenario shows a
signification effect on its applicability and performance. In the work of [5], the prediction of football match outcomes
based on bookmakers odds using K-Nearest Neighbour Algorithm is proposed. The aim was to solve the inconsistency in
calculating betting odds by bookmakers based on number of variables involved. This is carried out by measuring the
similarity between the competitions based on the betting odds. Performance data was obtained using the previous games
from Turkey Super league and was used to test the model based on k-nearest neighbor algorithm. A risk analysis option
added to the model significantly decreased the margin of error in the predicted games. Also, a total of 17 feature vectors
derived from 8 data types were computed for all the training and test samples. The success of the prediction results was
assessed by taking the probability rates of the bookmaker as reference. Without using risk analysis, the developed model
made better predictions at a rate of 1.96% according to full time result betting and at a rate of 7.84% according to double
chance betting. Risk analysis was carried out after examining the result. Hence, a lower error rate was achieved. In
addition, the author in [18] applied fuzzy logic to detect efficient failure in order to avoid the degradation of network
performance in advance before data transmission. The work was motivated at curtailing the effect of certain environmental
conditions that lead to failure of randomly distributed nodes in a distributed sensor network (DSN). The approach first
identify failure nodes and link failures between nodes in the DSN and then perform fault recovery. About 500 nodes, each
having its corresponding energy, sink nodes, transmission range, threshold level and bandwidth were used to generate data
for fuzzy logic experiment which was used to compute the link efficiency and energy consumption with 100 iterations
respectively. Experimental results show an improvement in throughput, latency, and energy consumption of the DSN. The
work achieved a robust and efficient fuzzy-based detection.

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III. MATHEMATICAL MODEL

The formalization of the Fuzzy logic prediction of the proposed system is presented as follows:
Given that Pk , k  1, 2, ... , q is the set of football clubs; z j , j  1, 2, ... , m is the set of attributes (manager profile,
players quality, home/away match factor, weather, number of matches, and so on) assigned to each football club;
xi , i  1, 2, ... , n is the set of events (change of manager, drop in club form, injury, suspension, mid-season player sales,
change in weather and fatigue) on each z j and Tt , t  1,2,...,h is the time specified for each x i , then the confluent
function c which returns the ordered samples of ith event for jth attribute of kth football club at time Tt is represented as
follows: : :
 c ( xi , j ,k , Tt )  wi , j ,k (1.1)
where wi , j ,k is the ordered samples of events xi , j ,k at time Tt . Let  x ( wi , j ,k ) and  x ( g j ,k ) represent external and
internal transition functions, respectively which return the average data of ordered events and the fuzzy value respectively
for jth attribute of kth football club, then:
1 n
 x ( wi , j ,k )   wi, j ,k , j  1, 2, ..., m ; k  1, 2, ..., q
n i 1
(1.2)

 0 , if g j ,k  a
(g )  a (1.3)
 j ,k , if a  g j ,k  b

 x ( g j ,k )   b  a
c  ( g j ,k )
 , if b  g j ,k  c
 cb

 0 , if c  g j ,k

where g j ,k is the average data of ordered events of football clubs; a, b and c represent the parameters of the membership
function. Given that S(vj,k) and A(vj,k) represent the membership function of club attributes and Fuzzy function respectively,
which return fuzzy membership grade for jth attribute and the prediction rate respectively for each kth football club, then:

 Very Low if v j ,k  0.1

 Low if 0.1  v j ,k  0.4

S (v j ,k )   Moderate if 0.4  v j ,k  0.7 (1.4)
 High if 0.7  v j ,k  0.8

Very High if 0.8  v j ,k  1.0
N
A(v j ,k )   wr ( f r ( S (v j ,k ))) (1.5)
r 1

where v j ,k is the fuzzy value of club attributes, r = 1,2,…,N represents the set of rules that govern the input and output
relationship of each football club based on Sugeno inference mechanism, w r is the normalized firing strength of rules, fr
represents the Fuzzy Logic consequent parameters of prediction rate.

IV. TEST DATA

A case study of the model was carried out using data obtained from the English Premier league (EPL) Clubs 2017/2018
Season. The modeling was done using match statistics data of the twenty (20) teams of English Premier League (EPL)
2017/2018 season. Table 1 shows a sample of the 20 English Premier League Teams with their respective season’s stats
measured in membership grades ranging from 0-1.

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Table 1: Sample of 20 EPL Teams with respective season stats in membership grades
S/N TEAM Manager Players’ Injuries Home/Away Fatigue Tactics Mid-Season Drop in
Skill Quality factor Sale Form
1. Manchester City 0.8 0.8 0.3 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.1 0.2
2. Manchester United 0.8 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.3 0.5
3. Liverpool FC 0.8 0.7 0.4 0.6 0.5 0.7 0.2 0.2
4. Tottenham Hotspurs FC 0.7 0.7 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.2 0.2
5. Chelsea FC 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.6
6. Arsenal FC 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.7
7. Burnley FC 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.7
8. Leicester FC 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.8 0.7 0.3 0.7
9. Everton FC 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.6 0.4 0.5
10. Watford FC 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.5 0.5 0.5
11. AFC Bournemouth 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.8 0.5 0.2 0.7
12. Brighton & Hove 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.5 0.1 0.8
13. Newcastle United 0.7 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.8 0.7 0.3 0.7
14. Swansea City 0.5 0.4 0.8 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.4 0.8
15. Huddersfield Town 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.4 0.9
16 Crystal Palace 0.7 0.6 0.8 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.3 0.7
17. West Ham United 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.6 0.4 0.7
18. Southampton FC 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.6 0.4 0.7
19. Stoke City FC 0.5 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.8 0.5 0.4 0.8
20. West Bromwich Albion 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.4 0.8 0.4 0.3 0.8

V. MODEL IMPLEMENTATION

The model development requirements are into two main parts, software and hardware and dataset requirements. The match
statistics dataset also forms a major component for the model building.
a. Software Requirements
i. MATLAB 7.13.0.564 (R2017b) version
ii. Fuzzy Logic Toolbox
b. Hardware Requirements
i. HP Compaq, AMD A4-1200, 1 GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 64-bits OS
c. Dataset Requirements
i. Dataset of English Premier League (EPL) match statistics for 20 teams

A. Model Parameters
The fuzzy-based model parameters are outlined below.
a. Number of input variable(s) = 13, Number of output variable(s) = 1
b. Inference type = Takagi Sugeno FIS
c. Number of rules in Rule-base = 60
d. Membership function Used = Gaussian MF
e. Maximum Number of Linguistic variable(s) = 3 (Low, Average, High) except for Location variable which has only two
linguistic variables (Away and Home)
f. Implication type = min method
g. Aggregation type = max method
h. Defuzzification technique = wtaver method

B. Setting of the Input and Output Variable(s) Range Values

Table 2 shows the mapping range of the input and output variables(s). The ranges were done in ordinal scales which were
represented in linguistic scale (of low, average and high respectively).

Table 2: Inputs and output variable(s) linguistic variable ranges

S/N Abbr. Description Low Average High
1 LOCA Location of Match 0 – 0.5 (Away) 0.5 – 1 (home)
2 POSS Possession 0 – 0.3 0.3 – 0.7 0.7 – 1.0
3 L5OF Last 5 Games Overall Form 1 – 1.6 1.6 – 2.3 2.3 - 3
4 L5HR Last 5 Games Home Record 1 – 1.6 1.6 – 2.3 2.3 - 3
5 L5AR Last 5 Games Away Record 1 – 1.6 1.6 – 2.3 2.3 - 3
6 SHWR Shots Wide Ratio 0 – 0.3 0.3 – 0.7 0.7 – 1.0
7 SHTR Shots On Target Ratio 0 – 0.3 0.3 – 0.7 0.7 – 1.0
8 FOUR Foul Ratio 0 – 0.3 0.3 – 0.7 0.7 – 1.0

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9 CORR Corner Ratio 0 – 0.3 0.3 – 0.7 0.7 – 1.0

10 YECR Yellow Card Ratio 0 – 0.3 0.3 – 0.7 0.7 – 1.0
11 RECR Red Card Ratio 0 – 0.3 0.3 – 0.7 0.7 – 1.0
12 GOSC Goals Scored 0 – 2.3 2.3 – 4.6 4.6 – 7
13 GOCO Goals Conceded 0 – 2.3 2.3 – 4.6 4.6 – 7
14 MAOC Match Outcome 0 – 1 (Lose) 1 – 2 (Draw) 2 – 3 (Win)

The approximate highest goals scored in a single EPL match for 2017/2018 season was set at 7 goals while 0 is the
minimum respectively. The first input variable, “Location” has only two linguistic variables, namely Away and Home,
whilst the other variables have three linguistic variables respectively.

VI. MODEL TESTING

For simulation of the implementation stages, the first team in the EPL table (Manchester City) was used. Figure 1 shows
the setting of inputs and output variable(s) of the fuzzy model.

Figure 1: Setting the input and output variable(s) for Manchester City (MNC) Match Predictor fuzzy model

A. Mapping of the Input and Output Variables to Fuzzy Space

Here, 13 inputs and 1 output are mapped from their crisp categorical variables to fuzzy linguistic variables using Gaussian
membership function. Figures 2 – 6 shows the mapping samples of the variables to fuzzy sets while Figure 7 shows the
simulated match result. The maximum number of linguistic variables used was three except for the first input variable
(Low, Average, High).

Figure 2: Mapping of Location input variable

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Figure 3: Mapping of Possession input variable

Figure 4: Mapping of Last 5 Games Overall Form input variable

Figure 5: Mapping of Shots on Target ratio input variable

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Figure 6: Mapping of Goals Scored (average) input variable

Figure 7: Mapping of Match Outcome output variable.

B. Implementation of Fuzzy Rules from Expert Knowledge and Datasets

This section shows the fuzzy rule base generated from expert knowledge and sourced dataset. A snapshot of the first ten
rules is depicted in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Fuzzy Rule Base for Manchester City (MNC) Match Predictor fuzzy model

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There are a total of sixty (60) generated fuzzy rules in the rule base. The rule base computation was generated from the
sourced match statistics data of the Premiership teams’ games and done correlation analysis, source dataset and other
expert knowledge

VII. MODEL EVALUATION

The evaluation of the model training and validation are presented in Tables 3 and 4 as follows:

Table 3: Model Training Result

Error at Training Error at Testing Decision Time (seconds)
DATA TRAINING Phase
0.12 0.09 12

Table 4: Model Validation Result

VALIDATING THE Error at Checking Phase Error at Testing Decision Time (seconds)
MODEL 0.10 0.06 9

The quality of a predictive model is computed from using its loss function which is a difference between the expected
outcome and the predicted outcome. In essence, Average Testing Error (ATE) for our model is used to test for the model
performance and the correlation analysis shows the model accuracy achieved.
( ) ∑
where represent the error generated during testing while ( ) is the count of testing errors occurring at
training and checking phases

0.075
Since the ≤ 1, the loss function is low, hence model quality is very good

A. Correlation Analysis
The maximum coefficient of correlation determines the performance of the model on the combination of variables and
model parameters and is presented in Table 5 as follows:

Table 5: Correlation Analysis

( )
PHASE OUTPUT FIS OUTPUT MODEL ACCURACY
TRAINING 0.68269193 0.797 79.56%
CHECKING 0.7589034 0.813 84.31%
TESTING 0.801478 0.952 89.27%

The correlation analysis showed that the model achieved 89.27% prediction accuracy on the provision of several
significant parameters that affect football match outcomes. Table 6 shows the comparison of the results of the existing
works with the results of the current work in respect to functionalities and features considered.

Table 6: Comparison of the results of existing works with the results of the current work
Works Considered Current Wok

[11] [12] [15] [16] [1]

Club Parameters
Home/Away Game No No Yes Yes No Yes
(Location)
Possession No No No No No Yes
Last 5 games Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Home Record No No No Yes No Yes
Away Records No No No Yes No Yes
Shots Ratio No No No No No Yes
Fouls Ratio No No Yes Yes No Yes
Corners Ratio No No No No No Yes
Yellow Cards Ratio No No Yes No No Yes
Prediction Accuracy Not considered Not considered Not stated 71% Not stated 89.27%
Red Cards Ratio No No Yes No No Yes

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Goals scored No No No Yes No Yes

Goals Conceded No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Match Outcomes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes
Algorithm Deployed Genetic & Clustering Rating system Artificial UML & Java Fuzzy Logic
Neural tuning algorithm Neuro-Fuzzy Programming
Inference
System

VIII. CONCLUSION

Football, like most other sports is a game full of amazing surprises and lucky or unlucky breaks. However, unlike most
other sports, football match result prediction is a totally different ball game of probabilities where a weaker team can spring
up surprises to defeat a stronger team occasionally, narrowly or even a landslide victory. This is so because of the
unpredictability of the games. This work proposed a fuzzy-based model that is adapted with formal definitions to predict
football match outcomes in the 2017/2018 English Permier League season. Each football club attributes and change of
event on these attributes have been used to gather data for the research along with their computed linguistic parameters.
From the result produced in the model experiment, an average testing error of 0.075 with improved prediction accuracy of
89.27% is achieved. We are currently looking at improving the accuracy of our prediction using a supervised machine
learning algorithm or its ensemble.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The research received no funding or grant from any funding body or organization.

FUNDING INFORMATION
The funding for this manuscript is provided by the author and co-authors.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The main idea of the research was coined by the main author who also drafted the manuscript. The main author along with
the second author contributed immensely in model analysis and implementation. Also, the main author along with the third
author worked on the technical analysis of result and model building. All authors proofread and accepted the final draft of
the manuscript.

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 Int. J. Sci. Res. in Computer Science and Engineering Vol.8, Issue.1, Feb 2020

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AUTHORS PROFILE
OMOMULE Taiwo Gabriel presently works as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Computer
Science, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria. He holds his B.Sc (Hons.) and
M.Tech Degrees in Computer Science. As a professional, he holds different certifications in Project
management, Software Engineering and Data Analysis. As an academic, he has participated in rigorous
academic and research activities with notable scientific publications. His research areas include Data
Science and Information Security

IBINUOLAPO Adebola Julius is a postgraduate student in the Department of Computer Science, Adekunle
Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State Nigeria. He holds his B.Sc(Hons.) in Computer Science. His
research interests are Informatics and Data Mining

Department of Computer Science at Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria. He
holds his B.Sc (Hons.), M.Sc and Ph.D Degrees in Computer Science. As an academic, he has authored and
co-authored several scientific publications with significant contribution and advancement to the field of
computing. His research areas Software Engineering and Programming Language

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