Sacré bleu...
Earlier in the week we brought you news that David Luiz, yes the world's most expensive erm 'defender', was
officially FIFA's best player at the World Cup.
JOE is a big believer in statistical analysis but we have no idea how Fifa puts this list together. We think there must be an element of Homer Simpson's thinking that "you can come up with statistics to prove anything. Forty percent of all people know that."
According to the
latest figures published today, the best player in Brazil is now France's Karim Benzema. Quite an achievement given that he didn't even play in the semi-finals.
Okay, the Real Madrid striker was fairly prolific in the group stages scoring three times but there is no way that the former Lyon man is the best player we’ve seen this past month. Benzema failed to score in both of France's knock out matches against Nigeria and Germany as Les Blues failed to make the last four.
Failure to reach the semi-finals is a familiar trend in the Castrol rankings, only one player in the top five actually played in any of the games, German defender Mats Hummels (although he wasn't exactly overworked) against Brazil.
Columbia's brilliant midfielder, and all-round JOE man crush, James Rodriguez is in second place which makes us slightly angry. We feel that Rodriguez should top every list, we would probably even vote for him if he was allowed to run in Irish elections.
The rest of the top five is equally bizarre. French defender Raphael Varane is in third place, Thiago Silva is fourth while Hummels is fifth. What makes this FIFA index even more odd is that at a rating of 9.56, David Luiz is ranked above Neymar (9.53), Lionel Messi (9.41) and Thomas Muller (9.36)
If you want to try and understand the Castrol Index here’s their explanatory video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNuW-J_7CjI
JOE hasn't been this confused since we saw the second Matrix film.
