Ranking handball teams from statistical strength estimation

In this work, we present a methodology to estimate the strength of handball teams. We propose the use of the Conway-Maxwell-Poisson distribution to model the number of goals scored by a team as a flexible discrete distribution which can handle situations of non equi-dispersion. From its parameters, we derive a mathematical formula to determine the strength of a team. We propose a ranking based on the estimated strengths to compare teams across different championships. Applied to female handball club data from European competitions over the 2022/2023 season, we show that our new proposed ranking can have an echo in real sports events and is linked to recent results from European competitions.