A systematic approach for ranking football players within an integrated DEA-OWA framework

The ranking of players has always been an important input for key decisions in the football industry. This paper introduces a systematic methodology for ranking football players through objective performance factors within a framework that integrates data envelopment analysis and ordered weighted averaging operators. Players from European Premier League Football clubs are selected and ranked under a decision setting that involves the players' desirable and undesirable performance factors alongside the attitude of the decision maker. The robustness of the proposed methodology is evaluated using different levels of optimism of the decision maker.