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?

You may as well kiss England’s chances of winning the 2018 World Cup bid goodbye. England’s 2018 World Cup bid lay in tatters this weekend after The Mail On Sunday newspaper revealed that FA Chief Lord Triesman accused Spain and Russia of trying to bribe World Cup referees.

And today, it was announced that Triesman has quit as chairman of the 2018 World Cup bid.

In addition to that, The Mail revealed that Triesman was cheating on his wife and was involved in an intimate affair with a girl who was formerly his private secretary. This coming from a man who was supposed to be rebuilding the scandal-clad reputation that the FA has had and the disastrous 2018 World Cup bid thus far.

Lord Triesman’s intimate relationship with his former private secretary became so cozy that Triesman confided inside information about the 2018 World Cup bid process. Namely that Triesman believed that Spain may withdraw its bid to stage the 2018 finals if Russia, which also wants to host the event, helps it to bribe referees in next month’s World Cup tournament in South Africa.

Whether Triesman’s allegations are factual or not, it’s a damaging blow to England’s chances of winning the 2018 World Cup bid. The latest scandal certainly helps Russia’s chances of winning the race for 2018.

For the Football Association, it’s another dark day in their history. Mistake after mistake. Scandal after scandal. When will they learn?

If you are the CEO of a company, you expect to have most if not all the power to make decisions. It’s down to you to drive the business, to solve problems and delegate where necessary. You’re in charge and you have the power to hire and fire.

However, the Chief Executive of the FA, while technically at the pinnacle of the FA’s structure, appears to have almost no power at all. All the power gets diffused through the various board members, council members and all of their vested interests. This is why Chief Exec Ian Watmore quit this week. This was a man who had worked in government so not unused to the machinations of big political machines but he’d had a gut full of it after 9 months.

It’s hard to actually know what the FA does. If you asked most fans they wouldn’t be able to tell you. Apart form dishing out fines for squabbling managers and players, what do they do?

In reality, the FA is supposed to be the governing body of English football, overseeing the game from top to bottom. However, at a professional level, the FA is all but powerless. It is the Premier League’s bitch; unable to stand up to the biggest, most monied organisation. Below that the Football League fights its own corner so well that clubs dropping out of the Premier League it will be receiving even more money and for four years instead of the current two.

So what is the FA doing? Well they wasted a ton of money on the whole Wembley fiasco – a money pit if there ever was one. They are making a ham-fisted job of the 2018 bid. They are ridden from top to bottom with vested interests all fighting their own corners – often merely hanging on to a morsel of perceived power for its own sake. Meanwhile football continues without them.

No one epitomizes this bloated redundancy more than Dave Richards. Richards – a knight of the realm for what it’s worth – is a walking, talking conflict of interest. Somehow – and we must assume it is simply through some form of old boys act, is chairman of the FA Premier League, member of the Football Association Board, chairman of the FA’s international committee, president of the European Professional Football Leagues organization, chairman of UEFA’s Professional Football Committee. Blimey.

Now that looks like a man who is keen to acquire titles. Those jobs either require very little effort or he is not committed to doing them comprehensively. Or possibly both. When Ian Watmore resigned this week, the rumours were all about his inability to work with Richards who, again it is rumoured, simply blocks any moves to change the organization which provides him with an infinite gravy train. But whether that’s true or not, Richards should not be on both the board of the FA and chairmen of the Premier League. It compromises both positions. Who does he side with in a dispute between those sides?

The FA should be fighting for football for us, the fans. It should not be craven to money. It should be protecting the English game for England fans and for every person in this country who loves football and wants to watch and play it. But it doesn’t do that. The Premier League and Football League and all the other minor league organizations do that for themselves. The Premier League likes an ineffective FA so it can do what it wants when it wants without protest. But the lower leagues and the non-professional part of the game needs a strong FA to help them, especially financially. But as the chairman of The Northern League, the second oldest league in the world, said this week – they are simply negligent and have done little to help the money in the top flights cascade down to the lower levels

Football will kick off this weekend and thousands of games will be played regardless of whether the FA have a Chief Executive or not and on one will care. That’s because the FA is an irrelevancy; merely an old boys club to tour the world on a permanent freebie, feeling important and doing exactly nothing. It’s a disgrace.

The Football Association has unveiled a new Three Lions Crest for the FA and England teams, which will be worn for the first time when England wears their new Umbro shirts for the March 28th friendly against Slovakia at Wembley.

Pictured above is the new FA crest (left) and the new England one (right). The new designs take its inspiration from the 1948-49 crest, and the new England crest features a lighter blue, and more authentic tudor roses.

According to the FA “The single-lion emblem was first adopted by Henry II when he became King of England in 1154. It was added to by Richard I (The Lion-heart) who added a second, and then third lion by the end of his reign in 1199. However it was not until 1872, nine years after The FA was established, that the Crest featured in an England game, adorning the players’ shirts in the world’s first international match, between England and Scotland in Glasgow.”

What do you think about the new England crest? Click the comments link below and let us know.

The Premier League and Football Association have finally caught up to Justin.tv and are threatening legal action to prevent soccer fans from around the world watching live streaming games, according to the News Of The World newspaper.

However as of this morning, the streams are still available for today’s Bolton against Manchester City derby and record numbers of fans may visit the site for the first time because of the publicity created by the News Of The World article (see screenshot above, taken from Justin.tv this morning).

EPL Talk wrote about Justin.tv in September and reviewed how easy it was to watch the England against Croatia game. Plus we detailed how many channels were available and how many users were viewing the match. The News Of The World conveniently copy and pasted my research and included it in today’s story without attributing the source.

According to the News Of The World, recent stats from Justin.tv include 167,138 hits for the Man United versus West Ham game and 148,063 viewers for the Arsenal against Spurs derby.

In May 2007, the Premier League filed a lawsuit against YouTube because of the game highlights available on that website. But what the YouTube lawsuit and threatened legal action against Justin.tv expose is another issue entirely. There is obviously a huge demand for soccer fans to watch their favorite team online, but instead of creating a solution that generates revenue for the clubs and the league, the league is focusing on persecuting the companies that are illegally streaming the games.

Sure, what Justin.tv and YouTube (and hundreds of other sites) are doing is illegal, but the Premier League is in a continuous cat and mouse game that it’ll never win. Even with NetResult policing the Internet to limit the amount of goal highlights shown on YouTube and other sites, it’s impossible for that organization to win.

The lawsuit against YouTube and the threats of legal action against Justin.tv are merely a drop in the bucket. All the legal action is doing is showing that the Premier League wants to protect the companies who have paid large amounts of money for the Internet rights to the league.

The Premier League and its clubs are missing out on a huge opportunity to provide legal streaming of matches as well as goal highlights in a package that would be available online to football fans around the world. It’s ridiculous to think that in the year 2008 with all of the technology that’s available that soccer fans should be prevented from legally watching their favorite team play week-in, week-out.

By providing a legal alternative to watch any or all of the games, it’ll put most of the illegal streamers out of business. We, as human beings, are accelerating toward a world where most of our movie and TV watching are being done online. The concern at the Premier League is probably that providing all of the games by the Internet will reduce the amount of money that networks will pay for the TV rights, but I don’t believe this would happen. TV, as we know it, will continue to be around for several years. Until TVs become obsolete, the Premier League has a massive opportunity to generate massive amounts of revenue from both TV and Internet rights.

With the prediction by Lord Triesman, head of the Football Association, that the current global economic crisis could spell a ‘terrible danger’ to clubs with spiralling debt, meaning could we actually see a Premier League club go to the wall? According to Triesman the Premier League is currently in £3bn worth of debt so the possibility is looming ever larger.Triesman’s prediction comes on the same day when West Ham’s chairman and major shareholder, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, saw his Icelandic bank Lanksbanki nationalised and he was sacked from the board.

Despite reassurances that Gudmundsson’s assets are spread out and that this won’t effect West Ham you do have to start to wonder whether even the foreign investor can save the over spending Premier League club. Lord Triesman’s predicts that Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea account for nearly a third of the £3bn worth of debt so are even the big clubs safe from financial ruin?

Well you would have to say Chelsea and Manchester United will be fine what ever the global economy throws at football but Liverpool seem to be being hit hard. Liverpool Chief Executive Rick Parry has tried to play down claims that the credit crunch has meant the Reds won’t be able to build their new stadium on Stanley Park for perhaps a year.

The club are riddled with debt after the takeover by George Gillett and Tom Hicks but they are not the only ones. A while back there was a story that Michele Platini only wanted clubs who were debt free to compete in the Champions League and Uefa Cup. It turned out that only three clubs, under Platini’s rule, would have been eligible to compete. According to one report those clubs were Stoke City, Newcastle and West Ham, although I feel that may have changed now with the Toon’s ownership dilemma and the Hammers looking like they might have to fork out up to £50million in compensation to Sheffield United.

So could we be on the verge of seeing a Premier League club go to the wall? Well it’s rare to see a club go out of business in any level of football so you would have to think not but perhaps it might be the end of large transfers. That is apart from Manchester City, whose owners have more money than sense and if things carry on as they are in the economic world City could be a good bet to win the Premier League a few years down the line. However looking at the story of West Ham’s foreign owner in financial trouble you even have to wonder if outside investors have enough to save the Premier League.

There is a real possibility that we will have big clubs like Leeds United be financial ruined by over spending and end up being stuck in the lower tiers of English football. This is a very pessimistic outlook but things are very worrying for everyone and it looks as though football will not escape unscathed.

The Premier League can not continue in the same way it has been going on for the last few years and the effects of the credit crunch can already be seen in the stands where there are a growing numbers of empty seats. The Premier League’s bubble is going to burst, it just seems like most club are not ready for it and it will have disastrous consequences for owners and fans alike.