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Scheduling the South American Qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup by integer programming

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  • Durán, Guillermo
  • Guajardo, Mario
  • Sauré, Denis

Abstract

Every four years, the 10 national teams members of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) compete for one of the South American slots in the final phase of the FIFA World Cup. The qualifying competition consists of a double round robin tournament. The matches are scheduled in 9 closely spaced pairs known as double rounds. Every team plays twice in each double round. The tournament is spread over 2 years, so the double rounds are months apart. After using the same mirrored schedule for about twenty years, and persistent complaints from its members, CONMEBOL decided to change the schedule for the 2018 World Cup. Supported by one of CONMEBOL’s members, we used integer programmming to construct schedules that overcome the main drawbacks of the previous approach. After exploring many design criteria, we proposed a candidate schedule based on a French scheme. The main feature of the proposed schedule is that every team plays once at home and once away on each double round, a departure from traditional symmetric (mirrored) schemes. This proposal was unanimously approved by CONMEBOL members and is currently being used in the qualifier tournament for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

Suggested Citation

  • Durán, Guillermo & Guajardo, Mario & Sauré, Denis, 2017. "Scheduling the South American Qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup by integer programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(3), pages 1109-1115.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:262:y:2017:i:3:p:1109-1115
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2017.04.043
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Rasmussen, Rasmus V., 2008. "Scheduling a triple round robin tournament for the best Danish soccer league," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 185(2), pages 795-810, March.
    2. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Jaime Miranda & Denis Sauré & Sebastián Souyris & Andres Weintraub & Rodrigo Wolf, 2007. "Scheduling the Chilean Soccer League by Integer Programming," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 37(6), pages 539-552, December.
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    4. Dries Goossens & Frits Spieksma, 2009. "Scheduling the Belgian Soccer League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 39(2), pages 109-118, April.
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    9. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Rodrigo Wolf-Yadlin, 2012. "Operations Research Techniques for Scheduling Chile's Second Division Soccer League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 273-285, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Ritxar Arlegi & Dinko Dimitrov, 2023. "League competitions and fairness," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 45(4), pages 1-18, May.
    2. Sebastián Cea & Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Denis Sauré & Joaquín Siebert & Gonzalo Zamorano, 2020. "An analytics approach to the FIFA ranking procedure and the World Cup final draw," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 286(1), pages 119-146, March.
    3. Arlegi, Ritxar & Dimitrov, Dinko, 2020. "Fair elimination-type competitions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 287(2), pages 528-535.
    4. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Facundo Gutiérrez, 2022. "Efficient referee assignment in Argentinean professional basketball leagues using operations research methods," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 316(2), pages 1121-1139, September.
    5. Guillermo Durán, 2021. "Sports scheduling and other topics in sports analytics: a survey with special reference to Latin America," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 29(1), pages 125-155, April.
    6. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Facundo Gutiérrez & Javier Marenco & Denis Sauré & Gonzalo Zamorano, 2021. "Scheduling the Main Professional Football League of Argentina," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 51(5), pages 361-372, September.
    7. L'aszl'o Csat'o & L'aszl'o Marcell Kiss & Zsombor Sz'adoczki, 2023. "The allocation of FIFA World Cup slots based on the ranking of confederations," Papers 2310.19100, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    8. David Van Bulck & Dries Goossens & Jo¨rn Scho¨nberger & Mario Guajardo, 2020. "An Instance Data Repository for the Round-robin Sports Timetabling Problem," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 45(2), pages 184-200, May.
    9. Di Mattia, Alessandro & Krumer, Alex, 2023. "Fewer teams, more games, larger attendance? Evidence from the structural change in basketball's EuroLeague," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(1), pages 359-370.
    10. Van Bulck, David & Goossens, Dries, 2023. "The international timetabling competition on sports timetabling (ITC2021)," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(3), pages 1249-1267.
    11. László Csató, 2020. "The UEFA Champions League seeding is not strategy-proof since the 2015/16 season," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 292(1), pages 161-169, September.
    12. Yun-Chia Liang & Yen-Yu Lin & Angela Hsiang-Ling Chen & Wei-Sheng Chen, 2021. "Variable Neighborhood Search for Major League Baseball Scheduling Problem," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-18, April.
    13. Csató, László & Petróczy, Dóra Gréta, 2022. "Hogyan számszerűsíthető az ösztönzéskompatibilitás? Esettanulmány a sport világából [Quantifying incentive compatibility: a case study from the world of sports]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 841-852.
    14. Csató, László, 2017. "European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup can be manipulated," MPRA Paper 82652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Guajardo, Mario & Krumer, Alex, 2023. "Format and schedule proposals for a FIFA World Cup with 12 four-team groups," Discussion Papers 2023/2, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    16. Christian Ackermann & Felix Hahne & Julia Rieck, 2022. "Matching and Scheduling of Student-Company-Talks for a University IT-Speed Dating Event," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 1-29, September.
    17. van Doornmalen, Jasper & Hojny, Christopher & Lambers, Roel & Spieksma, Frits C.R., 2023. "Integer programming models for round robin tournaments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 310(1), pages 24-33.
    18. Dries Goossens & Jeroen Beliën, 2023. "Teaching Integer Programming by Scheduling the Belgian Soccer League," INFORMS Transactions on Education, INFORMS, vol. 23(3), pages 164-172, May.
    19. Goller, Daniel & Krumer, Alex, 2020. "Let's meet as usual: Do games played on non-frequent days differ? Evidence from top European soccer leagues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(2), pages 740-754.
    20. Durán, Guillermo & Durán, Santiago & Marenco, Javier & Mascialino, Federico & Rey, Pablo A., 2019. "Scheduling Argentina’s professional basketball leagues: A variation on the Travelling Tournament Problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 275(3), pages 1126-1138.
    21. Csató, László, 2022. "Quantifying incentive (in)compatibility: A case study from sports," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 302(2), pages 717-726.

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