Balancing Carry-Over Effects in Football League Tournaments

Abstract

Football leagues are round robin competitions. It is widely believed that for each match, each team has an effect on its opponent which would carry over to the next match. Such the carry-over effects might yield some advantage among competitors. In this article, we investigate the schedule arrangement of round robin tournaments with the aim of distributing the carry-over effects as evenly as possible, which is called round robin tournament balanced for carry-over. Furthermore, we will apply our scheme for the Thai and Spanish football leagues.