A Model to Predict the Success of Countries Participating in the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia Using Intelligent Method of Multilayer Perceptron Networks (MLP)

The study is to designing a model to predict the success of countries participating in the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. This study was conducted on two qualitative (setting indices) and quantitative (collecting data from selected countries) steps. Semi-structured qualitative and depth interviews was conducted with 24 elites that aware of the issue of study with non-randomly and purposeful procedure.After identifying indexes, information of selected Indexes (26 Indexes of the political, economic, social, cultural, technological and sporting as theoretical model (PEST+ S)) was collected for 38 countries that were selected with non-randomly and Available procedure since 1978 Argentina FIFA World Cup to 2014 Brazil. On the next step, the predicted 26 indexes were compared with actual values ​​in 2010 and 2014 to test the conceptual model. The results showed that MLP method was of less error at predicting the 26 indexes. In final step, 26 indexes in 2018 were estimated and position of selected countries was predicted in 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia.According to MLP results, Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan and South Korea, with position of 1 from the Asian continent will qualify to FIFA World Cup. Also, Belgium and Portugal will ascend to the semifinals, according the predicted position of 4.