Football Match Prediction with Tree Based Model Classification

Abstract

This paper presents the football match prediction using a tree-based model algorithm (C5.0, Random Forest, and Extreme Gradient Boosting). Backward wrapper model was applied as a feature selection methodology to help select the best feature that will improve the accuracy of the model. This study used 10 seasons of football data match history (2007/2008 – 2016/2017) in the English Premier League with 15 initial features to predict the match results. With the tuning process, each model showed improvement in accuracy. Random Forest algorithm generated the best accuracy with 68,55% while the C5.0 algorithm had the lowest accuracy at 64,87% and Extreme Gradient Boosting algorithm produced accuracy of 67,89%. With the output produced in this study, the Decision Tree based algorithm is concluded as not good enough in predicting a football match history.