Tomorrow is already the last match of the group stage against Austria. Who will make it to the next round is the big question of course. It will be exciting to see who is making it to the next round. As always first a couple of interesting facts about the historical matches of these countries:
- The first 45 years, after the first match on the 10th of December 1933, Austria dominated this match
- The most goal-rich duel between these countries was on the 26th of March 2008, the result was 3-4 for the Netherlands with 2 goals from Klaas Jan Huntelaar
- Last 30 years the Netherlands is dominating by 7 victories in a row
Before I go to the prediction, I have a couple of things to share beforehand. The whole configuration of the table, preparation of the data, and building of the custom model can be found in this blog article.
Data
All historical matches between the Netherlands and Austria are included in the data set. This time I also thought a lot about how to improve the model or let more variables impact the model. A couple of things that came by but did not make it (yet):
- the temperature during the match (taking an average)
- day of the week (workweek or weekend)
This time I added a new variable that highlights if the game was played in the last two decades. The reasoning behind this would be that recent results of the game could have a bit more impact since the same players are still active perhaps? Would love to hear feedback or ideas from everyone if you have thoughts on what to add. Just bear in mind that:
- the data should be finable on the web, so in the case of temperature, this is perhaps difficult to find maybe?
- the outcome should be binary, fixed options, or of type numeric values.
Data source: Netherlands national football team: record v Austria (11v11.com)
AI Model crushed the game against Austria
Now let’s find out what the AI Builder prediction model will predict for the match against Austria, will it be:
- Win, W, 806650000
- Draw, D, 806650001
- Lost, L, 806650002
We run the Power Automate Flow that is described in the previous blog article, with the following input:
- Opponent = Austria
- Where = Home
- Type = Tournament
- Last2Decades = Yes
As you can see, the AI Model crushed the game against Austria by predicting 806650000 which is mapped to W(Win). So this means that according to the AI Builder prediction model the Netherlands will Win the game. With a Likelihood score of 0.9958 it would mean that the Netherlands will win the game 😎 .
Hopefully, the Netherlands will make it to the next round which means a new opportunity to predict. For now, may the best win and enjoy the game everyone.
