A few years ago I had a similar idea for trying to build team models, so you can make a better guess at the performance of national teams, since they don't play very often, or for league teams due to transfers at the start/during the season, but hadn't got as far as you :)
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/193839/sbsl_ecml2012.pdf
A few years ago I had a similar idea for trying to build team models, so you can make a better guess at the performance of national teams, since they don't play very often, or for league teams due to transfers at the start/during the season, but hadn't got as far as you :)