Serie A Guerin Sportivo 1980-1991 every game with player ratings

Making a start for 1989 calendar year ratings, with the Inter pair who probably do seem the most likely candidates for high averages overall (in Serie A as opposed to all competitions of course...and individual awards rightly take account of the other major games played in the year) and for this period I'm starting with - the 1989 part of 88/89 (which I'm using GS grades for as usual, but I can combine with Gazzetta grades from 89/90 for a combined sources overview and estimate).

Andreas Brehme 1989 Guerin Sportivo grades - 1988/89 (from January to end of season)
Bologna (h) - 7
Napoli (a) - 6
Lazio (h) - 7.5
Atalanta (a) - 7
Torino (h) - 7.5
Fiorentina (a) - 6.5
Ascoli (h) - 7.5
Pisa (a) - 6
Verona (h) - 6.5
Roma (a) - 6.5
Sampdoria (a) - 7
Como (h) - 7.5
Cesena (a) - 7
Pescara (h) - 6
Milan (h) - 7
Juventus (a) - 6.5
Lecce (h) - 7
Bologna (a) - 7
Napoli (h) - 7
Lazio (a) - 7
Atalanta (h) - 7
Fiorentina (h) - 7

Lothar Matthaus 1989 Guerin Sportivo grades - 1988/89 (from January to end of season)
Bologna (h) - 6.5
Napoli (a) - 6
Lazio (h) - 6.5
Atalanta (a) - 8
Torino (h) - 8
Fiorentina (a) - 6
Ascoli (h) - 6.5
Pisa (a) - 6.5
Verona (h) - 6.5
Roma (a) - 7.5
Sampdoria (a) - 7
Como (h) - 7.5
Cesena (a) - 6.5
Pescara (h) - 6.5
Milan (h) - 6.5
Juventus (a) - 6.5
Lecce (h) - 7.5
Bologna (a) - 7.5
Napoli (h) - 7.5
Lazio (a) - 7
Atalanta (h) - 7
Fiorentina (h) - 5

 

So that is an average of 6.86 for Brehme, and 6.82 for Matthaus. In range perhaps to challenge Maradona's 1988 average but I suspect they'll fall a bit short of doing that, and as stated I'll have to be combining GS with Gazzetta grades anyway so it won't be exactly comparable anyway.

Their 2nd half of season average will be similar, but that's a fair bit below the top ones (Platini from 82/83 and Maradona from 84/85 I think who were both well over 7 out of 10 on average for the 2nd set of games in those respective seasons I remember and I'm thinking there probably aren't any higher in this period we are looking at on this thread anyway - we can gauge that Gullit's start to 87/88 wouldn't exceed that for example and I don't really have a good idea or recollection about the progression of Zico's grades in 83/84 but I don't think they were heavily stacked to the second half of the season were they?).

 

Or the first half. I didn't mean to imply I recalled thinking his grades were better in the second half. I think if anything he made a good start didn't he, but we'd need to go back and check. At this point I assume neither half of the season (even with GS alone) would score quite so high as the Platini/Maradona half seasons I've mentioned. A season is made up of two halves of course though!

 

Well, Tuttosport is - and has always been - a joke, a totem for hardcore Juve fans who call Gazzetta dello Sport "Cazzetta dello Sporc" ("BS of the dirt") since they once or twice questioned a referee's unbiased decisions.

If you read match reports, there was no big difference between Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, La Stampa etc and the sports press back then (now there is) and the journalistic quality was certainly high almost everywhere.

 

Actually, I'm considering calculating for all 8 of these players in 1989, as I think it might be the case as it turns out that 1990 might not have any particular candidates for very high grades over the calendar year in full (but obviously I'm saying this having not seen Vegan's posts yet), and that will be the last full calendar year dealt with on this thread I assume (according to the title).

Something else I think I will look at doing is adding in the 1989 European Cup grades of Baresi and Van Basten, at least for the 88/89 half which have been provided by Vegan already, and showing a separate overall average incorporating those. I can go back and add in 1988 Uefa Cup grades for Maradona and Careca too of course similarly.

 

Nice article about Careca here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...surveys/bd64b5af-4511-4c0b-9159-d1a29b497cd1/

 

So as per the scans Vegan added of GS ratings for Napoli in the Uefa Cup on page 62:

Careca 1988 calendar year Guerin Sportivo Uefa Cup ratings
PAOK (h) - 6.5
PAOK (a) - 7.5
Lokomotiv Leipzig (a) - 7
Lokomotiv Leipzig (h) - 7
Bordeaux (a) - 6

Average = 6.8 over 5 rated games
So overall Serie A+Uefa Cup 1988 average = 6.7 over 33 rated games

Diego Maradona 1988 calendar year Guerin Sportivo Uefa Cup ratings
PAOK (h) - 6.5
PAOK (a) - 7
Lokomotiv Leipzig (a) - 6
Lokomotiv Leipzig (h) - 6.5
Bordeaux (a) - 6.5
Bordeaux (h) - 6.5

Average = 6.5 over 6 rated games
So overall Serie A+Uefa Cup 1988 average = 6.75 over 32 rated games