FIFA Case Dismissed on a Technicality

Remember the old cliché about being able to prove just about anything with statistics? Well, here are a few to play with.

Italy 7. France 4. Germany 4. Portugal 4. Argentina 2. Brazil 1. England 1.

Got it yet? These are the 23 players in the 2006 World Cup squad chosen by the FIFA technical study group. Unfortunately, the list is not accompanied by a detailed explanation, so the thought processes of everyone at FIFA have to remain secret. A case of chronic enigma.

For the record, the players who were selected are as follows: Buffon, Cannavaro, Zambrotta, Pirlo, Gattuso, Totti, Toni (Italy); Thuram, Vieira, Zidane, Henry (France); Lehmann, Lahm, Ballack, Klose (Germany); Ricardo, Carvalho, Figo, Maniche (Portugal); Ayala, Crespo (Argentina); Ze Roberto (Brazil); Terry (England).

Interesting, isn’t it, how those clever chaps at FIFA happen to have come up with a squad of 23 players – 19 of whom are from the 4 semi-finalists! And with Italy in the overall lead with 7 representatives, they must be praying that the Azurri win the final so they can continue to preen themselves over their 20/20 hindsight.

Equally fascinating is the fact that the whole lot of them are drawn from just 7 national teams – all of whom, needless to say, made it to the knock-out stage. That leaves a large number of participating international sides who have to come to terms with the fact that sadly they have absolutely no outstanding players (at least as far as the mighty FIFA technical study group is concerned) and that category includes the Czech Republic (Nedved? Rosicky?); Holland (Robben? Van Persie?); Spain (Casillas? Fabregas? Torres?); Sweden (Ibrahimovic? Larsson? Ljungberg?); and Switzerland (Senderos?).

Worse still, there’s the public humiliation of Brazil (no Ronaldinho, no Ronaldo, no Kaka) and England, who were said (mostly by the English) to have loads of world class players – though in the light of their performances none come readily to mind.

By contrast, Portugal appear to have done remarkably well, prompting speculation that in view of the presence so many superstars they should perhaps not have found it necessary to throw themselves upon the mercy of the referees all the time. However, when two of those superstars turn out to be Carvalho and Maniche, most people are inclined to advise the technical study group from FIFA to become a lot more technical and to keep on studying until they get it right.

But you only have to look at the FIFA World rankings to appreciate that!