the "best" in the world?

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Staff at the British office of Information Builders (IBI) tracked a string of alternative statistics during Germany 2006, including dives, feigned injuries, referee intimidation, and tantrums. According to their findings from watching TV broadcasts of the games, Italy leads in dives (32), France in tantrums (28), and Paraguay in fake injuries (12). Croatia, France, Italy and Portugal are tied in bullying the referee incidents with five, although Croatia played half the games (3) than the others did.


Information Builders devised the "IBI Foul Play Index" by awarding points for yellow and red cards, bullying the referee, dives, fake injuries and tantrums. The total is then divided by the number of games played. Paraguay leads the tournament with an index of 45, followed by Italy (40) and the Netherlands, Ivory Coast and Portugal (37). France is tied with Germany, Switzerland and Togo for 14th at 26. England, tied with South Korea, is 19th at 23. Trinidad and Tobago was the best behaved team the tournament, with a Foul Play Index of just 14. They were nailed for just four dives, three tantrums, and two fake injuries.

I attribute Italy's win to two things: (1) their admittedly impressive impenetrable defence and goaltending (I've been sold on Buffon and Cannavaro being the best at their respective positions); (2) the last-minute job of the Aussies in the second round.

But alas, as they say, it's not about "how", it's about "who".

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