Ranking of Football Players by DEA-Super Efficiency Model: An Evidence From English Premier League 2016/17 Season

Abstract

            In the professional and competitive sport ranking and rating of players and teams in response to their performance is vital. There is no universal method of ranking which can be applied to all sports. In this study we suggest Data Envelopment Analysis super efficiency technique for ranking of football players in English Premier League 2016/17 season. Performance of 46 forwards and 31 midfielders was evaluated and subsequently ranked who had played a minimum of 1000 minutes and had       scored at least 3 goals during the season based on their input and output statistics. According to the CCR DEA model, only twelve players reached the performance of 100%. This means that only 26.086% of the sample reached the efficiency frontier. The average CCR performance of the forward players during the 2016/17 was 0.85%. The results showed that midfielders were more efficient than forwards but strikers were more successful in scoring goals. The use of super efficiency analysis sets out to rank the DMUs which allows an unbiased assessment of player performance. Such an efficiency measuring system would provide useful information to management of football clubs, their coaches and to football players themselves.