I’ve always had an itch to write a web-based soccer management game, even though there are a number of them already out there like Hattrick
There are a lot of intesting probabilistic problems in simulating a soccer match and league season such as:
- How many, what kinds of attributes to you need to describe players?
- How do you aggregate individual ratings into team stats to simulate results?
- Can you produce believable match results using some common probability distributions like the Poisson?
Although it lacks an online component, the king of football simulations is Championship Manager. Its not sold in the States but it is one of the best selling computer games in the UK. Not bad for a giant spreadsheet on massive amounts of steroids!