3+ teams in head-2-head comparisions...what rule strikes

Discussion in 'Statistics and Analysis' started by Gibraldo, Feb 4, 2017.

  1. Gibraldo

    Gibraldo Member+

    radnicki nis
    Serbia
    Nov 17, 2005
    Club:
    FK Crvena Zvezda Beograd
    Hi folks,

    I am about to program a piece of software, that takes the tiebreaker rules of any specific competition and applies it to a group, so that the standings in a table are matching these tiebreaker rules.

    Especially in World Cups, Euros and their qualifiers, various tiebreaker rules have been applied.

    In earlier days the rules were almost exclusively:

    1.) Pts out of all group matches
    2.) Goaf difference out of all group matches
    3.) Goals scored in all group matches
    4.) head-2-head of teams that are all matching criteria 1-3
    5.) fairplay or sth else

    Later we had tiebreakers like:

    1.) Pts out of all group matches
    2.) head-2-head of all teams equal on points.
    3.) ...

    I really managed to program this flexibility which costed me some days but now i come to a point, where i am not clear about how the h2h-rules are defined.

    In fact, I only know one qualifier group that had a scenario, where a h2h-comparison was done with 3 teams equal on points. That was Africa Cup 2012 Qualifying Group G

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Africa_Cup_of_Nations_qualification

    Now I have a theoretical question regarding the h2h-standings of the three teams Niger, RSA and Sierra Leone.
    In this table, RSA is 2nd and Sierra Leone is third but both are equal on points, with 5 Pts. out of 4 h2h-matches. RSA has a +1 goal dif and Sierra Leone a -1 goal dif.

    Both h2h-matches against each other between RSA and Sierra Leone ended with a 0-0 draw.

    Now my question:

    What if Sierra Leone would have reached a 1-1 in the away match at RSA. In that case, they would have won the h2h against RSA due to away goals rule. Would that had made them being 2nd in the triple h2h-comparison-group? Or would a two team h2h-comparison within a tripple team h2h-comparison not been valid.

    I know a very specific question, but i ask, as i have to program it correctly. I could imagin such cases happening more often in club league tables, where h2h is the 2nd tiebreaker behind pts and 3 or 4 teams are level on points.
     
  2. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It might matter how many of the teams get to advance. For example, in a group of four that advances two teams, a three-way tie for first and a three-way tie for second could have different rules. In the USA, the NFL tiebreaker rules state that if there is a tie for multiple playoff spots, only one playoff team is determined at a time. With a three-way tie for first, one team could win a three-way head-to-head tiebreaker and the other two teams could be ranked based on their head-to-head games. With a three-way tie for second, one team could win a three-way head-to-head tiebreaker and the order of the other two teams might be nice to know but would be irrelevant to who advances.
     

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