In a round-robin tournament, if the final position of a team is already secured independently of the outcomes of the remaining games, it might play with little enthusiasm. This is detrimental to attendance and can inspire collusion and match-fixing. We demonstrate that tie-breaking rules might affect the occurrence of such a situation. Its probability is quantified via simulations for the four groups of the 2022/23 UEFA Nations League A, each of them being a home-away round-robin with four teams and 12 matches. The competitiveness of the last two games can be promoted by preferring goal difference over head-to-head results: the priority of goal difference reduces the chance of a fixed position in the group ranking by at least two and usually five percentage points. Our findings provide important lessons on how to design ranking systems.

翻译：在圆柱赛中,如果一个球队的最后位置已经与剩余比赛的结果分开得到保障,那么它可能没有多少热情地发挥作用。这对球队的出勤有害,并可能引发串通和决赛。我们证明断绝关系规则可能会影响这种情况的发生。它的可能性通过模拟2022/23 UEFA International A联盟的四组人进行量化,每组人都是离家离家的圆柱,有四个球队和12个比赛。通过偏向目标差异而不是头对头的结果,可以提高最后两场比赛的竞争力:目标差异的优先性使集团中固定职位的机会减少至少两或通常五个百分点。我们的调查结果为如何设计排名系统提供了重要的经验教训。