Scheduling the South American qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA world cup by integer programming. (English) Zbl 1375.90184
Summary: 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.
MSC:
| 90B90 | Case-oriented studies in operations research |
| 90B35 | Deterministic scheduling theory in operations research |
| 90C10 | Integer programming |
References:
| [1] | Alarcón, F.; Durán, G.; Guajardo, M.; Miranda, J.; Muñoz, H.; Ramírez, L., Operations research transforms the scheduling of Chilean soccer leagues and South American World Cup Qualifiers, Interfaces, 47, 1, 52-69 (2017) |
| [2] | Bartsch, T.; Drexl, A.; Kröger, S., Scheduling the professional soccer leagues of Austria and Germany, Computers and Operations Research, 33, 7, 1907-1937 (2006) · Zbl 1090.90072 |
| [3] | Durán, G.; Guajardo, M.; Miranda, J.; Sauré, D.; Souyris, S.; Weintraub, A., Scheduling the Chilean soccer league by integer programming, Interfaces, 37, 6, 539-552 (2007) |
| [4] | Durán, G.; Guajardo, M.; Wolf-Yadlin, R., Operations research techniques for scheduling Chile’s second division soccer league, Interfaces, 42, 3, 273-285 (2012) |
| [5] | Fiallos, J.; Pérez, J.; Sabillón, F.; Licona, M., Scheduling soccer league of Honduras using integer programming, Proceedings of the 2010 industrial engineering research conference (2010), San Carlos, Mexico |
| [8] | Flatberg, T.; Nilssen, E. J.; Stølevik, M., Scheduling the topmost football leagues of Norway, EURO XXIII: Book of Abstracts of the 23rd European Conference on Operational Research, 240 (2009), Universität Siegen: Universität Siegen Bonn, Germany |
| [10] | Goossens, D.; Spieksma, F., Scheduling the Belgian soccer league, Interfaces, 39, 2, 109-118 (2009) |
| [11] | Goossens, D. R.; Spieksma, F. C., Breaks, cuts, and patterns, Operations Research Letters, 39, 6, 428-432 (2011) · Zbl 1235.90061 |
| [12] | Goossens, D. R.; Spieksma, F. C., Soccer schedules in Europe: An overview, Journal of Scheduling, 15, 5, 641-651 (2012) |
| [13] | Kendall, G., Scheduling English football fixtures over holiday periods, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 59, 6, 743-755 (2008) · Zbl 1157.90418 |
| [14] | Kendall, G.; Knust, S.; Ribeiro, C. C.; Urrutia, S., Scheduling in sports: An annotated bibliography, Computers and Operations Research, 37, 1, 1-19 (2010) · Zbl 1171.90400 |
| [15] | Kendall, G.; Lenten, L. J., When sports rules go awry, European Journal of Operational Research, 257, 2, 377-394 (2017) · Zbl 1394.90407 |
| [16] | Kendall, G.; Westphal, S., Sports scheduling: Minimizing travel for English football supporters, (Uyar, A. S.; Ozcan, E.; Urquhart, N., Automated scheduling and planning. Automated scheduling and planning, Studies in computational intelligence, Vol. 505 (2013), Springer Berlin Heidelberg), 61-90 · Zbl 1271.90005 |
| [17] | Pollard, R., Worldwide regional variations in home advantage in association football, Journal of Sports Sciences, 24, 3, 231-240 (2006) |
| [18] | Rasmussen, R. V., Scheduling a triple round robin tournament for the best Danish soccer league, European Journal of Operational Research, 185, 2, 795-810 (2008) · Zbl 1137.90513 |
| [19] | Rasmussen, R. V.; Trick, M. A., Round robin scheduling - a survey, European Journal of Operational Research, 188, 3, 617-636 (2008) · Zbl 1144.90396 |
| [20] | Recalde, D.; Torres, R.; Vaca, P., Scheduling the professional Ecuadorian football league by integer programming, Computers and Operations Research, 40, 10, 2478-2484 (2013) · Zbl 1348.90451 |
| [21] | Ribeiro, C. C., Sports scheduling: Problems and applications, International Transactions in Operational Research, 19, 1-2, 201-226 (2012) · Zbl 1267.90056 |
| [22] | Ribeiro, C. C.; Urrutia, S., Scheduling the Brazilian soccer tournament: Solution approach and practice, Interfaces, 42, 3, 260-272 (2012) |
| [23] | Schreuder, J. A., Combinatorial aspects of construction of competition Dutch professional football leagues, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 35, 3, 301-312 (1992) · Zbl 0800.90563 |
| [24] | de Werra, D., Some models of graphs for scheduling sports competitions, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 21, 1, 47-65 (1988) · Zbl 0656.90060 |
| [25] | Wright, M., 50 years of OR in sport, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 60, S161-S168 (2009) · Zbl 1168.90317 |
| [26] | Wright, M. B., Scheduling fixtures for basketball New Zealand, Computers and Operations Research, 33, 7, 1875-1893 (2006) · Zbl 1090.90096 |
This reference list is based on information provided by the publisher or from digital mathematics libraries. Its items are heuristically matched to zbMATH identifiers and may contain data conversion errors. In some cases that data have been complemented/enhanced by data from zbMATH Open. This attempts to reflect the references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible without claiming completeness or a perfect matching.
