It’s a bizarre story. First, in May, before the World Cup kicked off, Fabio Capello along with a man named Chicco Merighi launched the Capello Index, an objective system that measures and evaluates the performances of players. But after the news broke of the ratings system, many people thought it would be in poor taste to have the rankings system running during the World Cup. That included the Football Association (FA) who prevented Capello from running the index during the tournament.
But now that the tournament is over, the people behind the Capello Index launched the site this morning which reveals how poor the England footballers were rated.
However, “A spokesman from the FA said that the index ratings had not been seen or approved by Mr Capello, were published without his knowledge and that his representatives have taken immediate steps to have the material taken down.”
It’s a bit ridiculous, really. Why can’t Capello have an opinion about how the players in the 2010 World Cup were rated even if it includes his England team? Isn’t relatively objective data what it is, a reflection on how a player performed at the top level? Does it look bad that Capello is associated with the index? Perhaps it seems unbefitting of an England manager, perhaps.
Now supposedly Capello is trying to get the index removed from the Internet for fear of embarrassment (too late). So in case it gets wiped away, here’s more information about how the index works and how the England players were rated during the 2010 World Cup:
According to the Capello Index website, the Capello Index uses “a scoring system which takes account of every key event that occurs during the course of a match. The Capello Index has a unique formula that measures a player’s contribution from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. The score a player’s action generates is weighted depending on a number of factors, such as the area of the pitch in which they are completed, their impact on the match and the importance of game.”
The England players were rated as follows (out of a score of 100):
Robert Green 51.67
David James 59.28
Glen Johnson 57.18
John Terry 60.48
Ledley King 57.50
Jamie Carragher 59.04
Matthew Upson 60.21
Ashley Cole 59.58
Aaron Lennon 57.64
Frank Lampard 58.58
Steven Gerrard 60.98
James Milner 59.40
Gareth Barry 57.50
Shaun Wright-Phillips 61.09
Joe Cole 55.45
Wayne Rooney 58.87
Emile Heskey 60.15
Jermain Defoe 62.47
Peter Crouch did not play enough minutes to generate a mark.
In comparison, Diego Forlan achieved the highest score in the 2010 World Cup with a rating of 65.77.
Jermain Defoe scored the highest rating of the tournament for England with a 62.47. Not surprisingly, Robert Green scored a 51.67 after playing just one game and making a fatal mistake although, in fairness, he did earn back some credibility when he saved Jozy Altidore’s shot in the same game against the United States.
In the meantime, you may want to surf the Capello Index website as much as possible this weekend before it’s removed. It’s a bit of a fuss about nothing, in my opinion. What do you think?
so Capello took the time to rate Diego Forlan, Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey?
I doubt he even knew this site existed. probably just signed whatever his handlers put in front of him.
I think the Capello Index has about as much to do with Capello as Burger King as to do with Martin Luther King.
Incidentally, the Whopper rates very highly on my Martin Luther King Index.
I’m sorry Gaffer, are you saying that Cappello should have been allowed to rate his players in public, during the tournament?
I should have been more clear. I have no problem with him doing it before or after the World Cup, but during the World Cup would have been a nightmare for everyone involved, I agree.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
Quite a few US players averaged well higher than their English counterparts
Gaffer, I’d go one step further and suggest it was a foolish move even to release these ratings AFTER the WC, for two reasons:
(1) I think it could cause awkardness and division amongst the players at future meet-ups (friendlies/qualifiers). Imagine going and working alongside your colleagues AFTER your boss has publicly rated and ranked you all. That’s why work-place performance evaluations are generally confidential.
I know Capello doesn’t produce the ratings himself, but by letting them use his name, it implies he agrees with the methodology (and hence the results).
(2) By endorsing the ratings system, Capello has given ammunition to critics to question his decisions. Now critics can say “Fabio, do you agree that since SWP had a low score, you really should have played Joe Cole instead?” Or “Since Terry had such a bad score, do you think you should stop picking him in future?” He can hardly come back and say “Nah, I don’t think the ratings are a valid reflection, blah blah” since he endorsed them.
Overall, the whole thing was a pretty unwise move on his part, and I’m surprised he didn’t have the gumption to foresee these kind of problems.
The only problem with the index is that it has Capello’s name attached to it. It seems to be an impossible intellectual task for most fans to understand that he did not actually personally rate the players. He participated in creating the ratings system. That’s very different from rating the players himself.
I’m not sure if you’re directing that reply at me, but I made it pretty clear that I KNOW Capello doesn’t actually rate each player himself. That doesn’t detract from either of the two points I made in the slightest.
all Capello had to do (and what he should have done from the beginning) was say to that question: “It’s a computer formula that I advised on, but I don’t use this ratings system with the England team.”
If the players are stupid enough to believe otherwise maybe that explains why their ratings are so low.
the only way you can beat the tabloid news culture is to nip things in the bud and not let them fester. I saw Sean Custis (sp?) on Sky Sports being adamant that these rating s were sculpted by Fabio himself and how it undermined the FA or he’s lost the trust of the players, or something. Get real! Go back to writing about immigrants or Jordan’s sex life. You can’t let these stories fester.
“Peter Crouch did not play enough minutes to generate a mark.”
Pretty much sums up Capello’s ability to pick a team at the WC level.
An interesting point about this index is – how useful/informative are those ratings? It seems bizarre that the ratings go all the way from 0 – 100, yet the best player in the World Cup only got 65, and Rooney (who by all accounts had a dismal WC) got 58. It raises the question – just how badly would you have to play to get less than 50, and how well would you have to play to get above 70?
Put it this way – if you did an exam at school, and the brightest kid in school got 65%, while the absolute dumbest kid got 58%, wouldn’t you think there was something wrong with the way the test was written??
It’s all a bit ridiculous if you ask me. Why does any manager feel it necessary to rate his players in this manner and make it known to the public? The manager’s job is to communicate effectively with his players not the public. Maybe this was Capello’s problem. He couldn’t communicate with his players and hence the disastrous World Cup.
Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with how the Capello index was compiled before posting because it renders your whole comment irrelevant. Ridiculous indeed.
SWP is ranked as the second ‘best’ English player?!
Tells you all you need to know about the Crapello Index.
Maybe it tells you all YOU need to know because you obviously don’t need to know very much. It’s an objective index of specific actions players perform on the pitch. It doesn’t have to agree with your subjective opinion. That’s actually the whole point of creating this index.
Your a joke Gaffer, I know my comment was up for over an hour. Your a fascist.
All hail Gaffer before you get sent on a re-education camp
It’s ridiculous that the site was taken down just because the English players were rated poorly. Talk about not being able to handle the truth by the English FA.
Also, people need to actually read about how the ratings have been compiled before posting ignorant opinions. Fabio himself didn’t rate anyone. He participated in creating the ratings system. Then the computer applied the system to the player’s performances. It’s an objective, scientific measure of how the players performed, not Fabio Capello’s subjective opinion / evaluation.
It was silly for him to even be associated with this. This will surely ruin any relationship he has with the England players.
This is a very important piece of information that seems to have been left out of most of the coverage of the Capello Index. I just found out recently that it’s a formula that Capello endorsed. It’s also a formula that the company will use for the upcoming seasons in Spain, England, Italy and Germany.
I thought it was something Capello was going to do for England players only and as part of some greater exercise – until I see that Forlan was rated. Why would Capello sit down and rate the players from other games? So I thought it was basically some lackey doing the work (like the SIDs do for NCAA Coaches’ Polls).
Horrible reporting being done on this thing. Just horrible.
My comment where I point this out has also been removed.
EPL Talk is a joke and censors comments.
here’s the censored version from my email:
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[FFS], he doesn’t sit there and do the ratings himself. All they are using is a formula that Capello came up with to rate the players and paying the guy to use his image.
The players get points for things like passing, dribbling, tackles, assists, goals, etc.
No one is going to get close to 100 because no player is perfect at all aspects of the game and nobody is going to get 0 because no player goes out and sits down on the pitch for 90 minutes.
PFC, yes I do censor comments that include F bombs. Feel free to post your comment again and please refrain from profanity.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
lol@ PFC