Julien Guyon was live on French TV on January 20 and January 22 (right after the end of the UEFA Champions League games) in the popular sports TV program L’Equipe du Soir on La chaîne L’Équipe to comment on the probabilities of teams advancing to the round of 16/playoffs.
The new format of the Champions League (with a league phase where all 36 teams are ranked in a unique table) makes it quite tricky to evaluate those probabilities. It also raises a very natural new question for fans: aside from my team’s game, which other games should I watch (because their outcomes have the higher impact on the chances of my team advancing)? Julien came up with a new mathematical indicator of the importance of a game, explained in the video. The underlying statistical Poisson model on goals scored is based on the Elo rating of European soccer teams.
Julien’s work was also featured in two articles in the daily sports newspaper L’Équipe on January 21 and January 22 as well as in the newspaper Le Télégramme.
