Ahead of 2022/23, the voice behind Czech Footy finally found the courage to approach the brains behind Český Mistr, and so something the Czech football community had never had access to before — a visually straightforward, compact, team-specific season prediction that’s emotionally detached — was born.
Here is Jakub Černý himself introducing the backstory; for a more technical explanation, head here.
“Český Mistr” started as a university project with the intention to generate a small income from betting. It soon expanded into full league simulation, instead of just predicting match outcomes. That was the year the new Czech league format was introduced, leaving many shaking their heads over the middle group winner suddenly having the chance to sneak into the UEFA competitions.
The initial simulation proved that there could be matches at the end of the regular season that the teams would not want to win in order to increase their chances of getting into the middle group, from which it might theoretically be easier to qualify for the UEFA competitions. The work was rewarded as an Excellent Student Research Work and formed the basis for visualizations and analyses presented on X, my blog as well as in various Czech media.
Each team’s projection itself is based on team quality assessed by Elo rating system. The system optimally weights past results, taking strength of schedule and home field advantage into consideration. The probability of qualifying for UEFA competitions takes both the league and the domestic cup into account. MOL Cup is simulated with all formal seeding rules, however it abstracts away from the participation of amateur teams in the early rounds.
At its core, Jakub’s model is the closest we’ve come to an objective predictive model. That being said, to marry the forecasts with the reality of a hectic transfer-filled summer, the model is additionally fed a spoon of my subjective assessment of how much stronger or weaker each team has gotten. This is to account for major off-season changes like key player departures, coaching changes, or star arrivals. This time around, the simulations were ran on 2 July 2025, so they reflect club situations as of 1 July only.
