Quant research

Football Career Trajectory Model

Year
2026
Role
Solo
PythonpandasMonte CarloFBref data
Player-seasons
Horizons tested
2025–26
Unseen holdout
NOT PROVEN
Verdict

The question

Can you project a teenager’s footballing career? A pre-registered Monte Carlo trajectory model with aging curves, built on 24,057 Big-5-league player-seasons from FBref and cross-checked against unseen 2025–26 data at six horizons.

The verdict

NOT PROVEN: the model shows real skill, but its error bars are under-confident – and the pre-registered rule counts that as a fail. A model whose uncertainty cannot be trusted is not a model you can act on, however good its point estimates look.