Spain's performance in this championship was a mixture of bad luck, lack of coherent collective play and, above all, bad decisions by Helenio Herrera. Individually, the Spanish national team had several of the most technical players in Europe, but they did not get along on the field, often showing little understanding or excessive individualism. Tomorrow I will post a summary of the 1961-62 season in my thread of the best Spaniards of the year, with a synthesis of the chronicles I have read in different newspapers and books. However, it is true that they made things difficult for the Brazilians, but there were players who did not have the physical stamina to last 90 minutes. Of the players you mention, what was done with Del Sol was a difficult decision to understand, because as a right back he was unparalleled in Spain and very few at international level; the advantage of having this marvel of a player in his position was unfortunately wasted. Suárez is strange, because in some chronicles he was not liked at all and in others he was excellent... Santamaria was by far the best player in the first two games, so his substitution against Brazil was unbelievable. Fortunately, the Basque center back did very well.
Italian newspapers evaluate players from the early 40's ?! Interestingly, I thought they had been appreciated since the early 50's and never before!
Well, DBS Calcio shows average Serie A ratings for 1946/47 (but currently nothing between then and 1954/55 which is the next season they show). I checked the free La Stampa archive for early 50s and that source doesn't appear to have been rating players with grades (with the reports there are just players listed without grades given). Maybe it was one of the later ones to start doing it. I would have thought whichever source was doing it in 1946/47 would also do so for the seasons after then, through the early 50s too....
Corierre dello sport has ratings from the 1951/52 season, I only have those from Juventus, but there is no overall final ranking by average ratings!
Kopa's rating remains a mystery at the moment I think (as it is not viewable fully on that page) - the maximum it could be would be 4.83 I suppose (29 points from 6 games).
It was my fault that I didn't scan it right. Tomorrow I will scan it correctly. I didn't think much of it because it is the only publication where I have the ratings. Do you have any others? Pavlin, remind me what I had to look at for you from Bulgaria, I can't remember.
[Q Bulgaria's ratings from the 3 matches of the WC1974 of the AS newspaper and thanks for the 1958 World Cup Copa rating to make it a better ranking!
@Titanlux @PDG1978 @carlito86 @comme @Gregoriak @ManiacButcher @msioux75 @Paul W @PuckVanHeel @Tom Stevens @Vegan10 @wm442443 Colleagues, besides what @Titanlux lean from France football 58 I have not seen anything else with ratings from the 1958 World Cup or those before!