England’s Players Taken Off Capello Index.
It seems Diego Forlan was totally justified in winning the golden ball at World Cup 2010 in South Africa this summer according to the controversial Capello Index that caused so much trouble for the Italian before the World Cup had even begun. The Capello Index appeared on Saturday and included ratings for the England players during their stint at the World Cup. Capello was outraged and said he had not authorised the publication and was angry it had been published. He immediately demanded that the England players be removed which was done three days later. A disclaimer on the website says that the site which gives players a rating out of 100 is not the personal view of Capello, but rather the work of a group of professors who have devised a system to a lot points to the players on the basis of their performance.
The England players who where removed, needless to say performed extremely badly in the index just as they did in South Africa with no English player appearing in the top 45. Steven Gerrard was the only player to appear in the top 100 for the group stages coming in at 65. Jermaine Defoe had the highest average score of the England players at 62.47 while Robert Green had the lowest at 51.67.
Diego Forlan topped the ratings with Miroslav Klose and Thomas Mueller finishing 2nd and 3rd for Germany. Champions, Spain take the next three spots with Iniesta 4th, Xavi 5th and David Villa 6th. The top ten is completed by Uruguay’s Luis Suarez, Dutchman Arjen Robben, Schweinsteiger of Germany and Manuel Neuer also of Germany.
England’s players didn’t rate much better up to the end of the last 16 with only three making the top 100. Gerrard made it in at 71st, John Terry made 87th and Mathew Upson just scraped in at 100th. Interestingly the index had rated Ledley King, Michael Dawson and Sol Campbell as England’s best defenders ahead of John Terry and Rio Ferdinand. Fabio might be taking a sneaky look at the index the next time he’s heading off to a major championships.
The site now says it will be applying the same principles to all Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and Champions League matches for the coming season and will publish results within two hours of the end of matches. The best rating for a player in the world cup final was 75.17 and that one went to Spain’s Iniesta who as you remember happened to score the winning goal. There might just be something in that old science business after all.
