Obviously GdS was much more harsh on the Poland players in general. Only two of them get a 7 or slightly above on Sofascore (one because of the goal I guess, which he took nicely), but with some others close to that. As much as I said Sofascore doesn't really tell us exactly who played the best (but just the results of a formula based on set actions), their ratings in that game might strike the most reasonable balance (as compared to GdS and TNT) I think (and you've, SB, made some valid points about media ratings I think including the difficulty for journalists to grade 11 players of each side, plus subs).
Yes, Fabregas had a lot of praise for Kante as well, and was quite harsh (even though he has a nice manner in general, and technically his points were valid) on Rabiot in terms of the missed chances to deliver end product.
Fabregas did also praise Griezmann for the kind of things you're alluding to IIRC too (saying he's very good working between the midfield and defence of the opposition in general, including in this game). It's maybe not like me so much to pick out or praise the non-attacking midfielders, but I did feel like Reijnders was having a pretty good game generally, in terms of being reliable and neat. Not to compare with Kante, but I mean relatively speaking. I think I'd have enjoyed the game more had the Dutch team played more like they did at the start of game 1, but I guess it does make sense in a way, considering not only that France is France (albeit playing without Mbappe) but also the qualifying results, that Koeman felt that containment and trying to seize moments to score was his best bet to get a positive result....
I've thought about missed chances and similar thing, but on the other hand, usually when a big chance is missed by an attacker, at the same time it is created by someone, which sort of cancels it out, doesn't it? Quality of football in this instance is raised by the creative player and lowered by the attacker. Of course this is in a general case. Chances can be created through deflections or mistakes by players in which case, if they are missed, I can understand lower ratings for everyone. I am just not a fan of the idea that overall quality of a match is measured by number mistakes like unsuccessful passes, missed chances etc. For example, in the case of unsuccessful passes, those are usually a product of a good pressure put on by the opposition team so that as well would cancel out in ratings overall by giving higher ratings for pressure and lower for unsuccessful pass.. Football is a game of mistake; of trying to force mistakes. It is not believable to me that two very good teams like Netherlands and France could produce such low quality football. Imo, they clearly don't factor in these subtle elements of game into ratings such as great pressing, positioning, etc. Oh you remember that point? Wasn't it while back? Yeah, I think I am leaning more and more towards the conclusion that rating all players in a game is an insurmountable task without multiple competent people at it and a well-organized structure and method in place. I am thinking how I would rate them and honestly I have no idea. It would be as good as anyone guess. Btw, also I think Sofascore has loosen a criteria for what constitutes a big chance if anyone is into that sort of thing.
Yup, other than what I already mentioned, Koeman also said defending like that is less draining and tiring than trying to make the game. Kante is a lot, but not someone to switch play and tire opponents that way (like Wim Jonk - nice MatiGolz video for him - or Xavi if you like). At half-time it was just decided that a draw is fine and a small loss is also fine (for goal difference and the path to semi finals). And "if you can nick a goal the country will be happy for a few days, because France is 'the team' of this moment". Sofascore with a strong rating for Virgil comes also close to how I perceived it. Curious about the viewing figures. Against Poland was 4.7 million viewers. Around the level of Qatar2022, slightly higher perhaps, but not like the 1990s. edit: not happy with the yellow card. That was very harsh.
Now I have written down all the ratings of the 9 sources that, for now, I manage. The players with the best statistical ratings of the 1st day of the 1st phase are, in this order: Ahora sí, ya tengo anotados todos los ratings de las 9 fuentes que, por ahora, manejo. Los jugadores con mejores valoraciones estadísticas de la 1ª jornada de la 1ª fase son, por este orden: 1.- Musiala: 8,46 2.- Fabián Ruiz: 8,42 3.- Guler: 8,04 4.- Barella: 8,02 5.- Lamine Yamal: 7,99 6.- Man: 7,96 7.- Eriksen: 7,95 8.- Stanciu: 7,94 9.- Aebischer: 7,86 10.- Aké: 7,68 11.- Bellingham: 7,68 12.- Wirtz: 7,67 13.- Carvajal: 7,62 14.- Kroos: 7,61 15.- Kanté: 7,59 16.- Xhaka: 7,57 17.- Gakpo: 7,53 18.- Muldur: 7,52 19.- Unai Simón: 7,51 20.- Lobotka: 7,49 21.- Janza: 7,47 22.- Havert: 7,41 23.- Hancko: 7,41 24.- Gundogan: 7,40 25.- Kochoshravili: 7,35
This is why you should never trust the ratings of just one newspaper, even if it's la Gazzetta dello Sport or L'Équipe. Yamal got the mark 6,5 in almost all Italian newspapers, he got a 7 mark in SoFoot - the readers' mark was 7,21 - and Kicker awarded him a 2 which means 8 (in Germany the better the performance, the lower the mark: 1 means "perfect").
Btw, these are Spain's average marks so far: 7,30 Fabián Ruiz 7,15 Luis de la Fuente (coach) 6,90 Nico Williams 6,80 Álvaro Morata 6,65 Dani Carvajal 6,60 Cucurella, Pedri, Lamine Yamal 6,35 Unai Simón, Robin Le Normand 6,30 Rodri La Roja's team average is 6,50. Germany is second best with 6,45 and Switzerland is third with 6,22. Scotland has the lowest team mark: 5,56.
How unlucky is Hranac. He is responsible for all three Czech goals conceded. An own goal, a bad deflection that led to the game winner for Portugal, and now conceded a penalty on handball. Georgia is playing quite well and is not because of Kravatskhelia.
Wow, Georgia could have won it at the end with the 3 on 1 counter. Would have been harsh for Czechia but Georgia deserved the point.
Anyhow, I will give a try at evaluating performances in Turkey vs Portugal game but only looking at the Portugal side because I don't know Turkish players well so I can't keep track of them on the pitch. The first half performance (I haven't seen the first 4 minutes tho): Diogo Costa - 7 / 6.9 Nuno Mendes - 7 / 6.8 Pepe - 6 / 6.7 Dias - 6.5 / 6.8 Cancelo - 5.5 / 6.8 Palhinha - 5 / 6.8 Vitinha - 6 / 6.8 Leao - 7 / 6.4 Bruno Fernandes - 5 / 6.9 Bernardo - 7 / 7.4 Cristiano - 6 / 7.2 *the second rating is Sofascore rating I've looked at afterwards This is a rating scale I crafted that I like: 10 - Brilliant 9 - Excellent 8 - Strong 7 - Positive 6 - Okay 5 - Insufficient 4 - Poor 3 - Disappointing 2 - Terrible 1 - Abysmal Thoughts? EDIT: Cristiano actually had that good dribble-cross so I upped him for 0.5
Full time: Diogo Costa - 6.5 / 7.4 Nuno Mendes - 7.5 / 7.4 Pepe - 8 / 7.0 Dias - 8 / 7.0 Cancelo - 6.5 / 6.8 Palhinha - 5 / 6.8 Vitinha - 6.5 / 7.1 Leao - 7 / 6.4 Bruno Fernandes - 7 / 7.9 Bernardo - 8.5 / 8.2 Cristiano - 7.5 / 7.7 Subs in: Ruben Neves - 7 / 7.0 Neto - 5.5 / 6.5 Semedo - 7 / 6.4 A. Silva - 6 / 6.5 Joao Neves - N/A / 6.7 What do you think? EDIT: Martinez - 8.5
maybe 10 could be a ATG level performance against a competitive team 9 could be a ATG level performance vs a non competitive team 8 something slightly above standard world class 7 world class 6 good/influential 5 average 4 anonymous without being detrimental to your teams performance 3 a performance riddled with errors and little to no end product 2 similar to 3 but with even more mistakes/errors 1 something professional footballers shouldn’t be capable of Unless you score something like 3 own goals in one match as a defender you miss 6+ big chances in one match(forward) etc When you say 10 is brilliant and 9 is excellent it’s difficult to apply this to real life matches. What is the difference between being brilliant and being excellent?
The same deal, Belgium the first half: Casteels - 6 Theate - 6.5 Vertonghen - 6 Faes - 8 Castagne - 7.5 Onana - 9 Tielemans - 8 Doku - 8 De Bruyne - 7 Lukebakio - 6.5 Lukaku - 6.5
I find it weird they don't show the offside lines any more. All transparancy is gone. The Lukaku goal didn't look offside to me. I am sure the pundits will this turn inside out (unless it becomes 5-0 or so). Let's wait and see.
Full time: Casteels - 6.5 / 8.0 Theate - 7 / 7.3 (subbed off 77') Vertonghen - 7.5 / 7.3 Faes - 7.5 / 7.3 Castagne - 7.5 / 7.8 Onana - 7.5 / 6.9 Tielemans - 8 / 7.6 (subbed off 72') Doku - 8.5 / 7.6 (subbed off 72') De Bruyne - 8.5 / 8.6 Lukebakio - 6.5 / 6.9 (subbed off 56') Lukaku - 7.5 / 7.1 --- Trossard - 6.5 / 6.8 Mangala - 6.5 / 6.9 Carrasco - 7 / 6.6 Debast - 6.5 / 7.0 --- Tedesco - 7 Team average: 7.2
I havent seen the first 4 minutes so i dint know if something meaningful hapoened in that period, but yeah Bruno was surprisingly inadequate in the first half but he has stepped up in the second half when he was put next to Ronaldo. Even tho the goal was tap in, the follow up run was worthy and he had an excellent, long pass in the secind half that created a chance and a lot of space for Neto. And of no less value, he played some decent defense and put in the work there. He did misplace some passes unlike him, but if he did those well he would be higher rating overall. 7 seem to me to be fair rating considering the goal and some decent plays. Pepe on the other hand was pretty quiet in the first half with not much standing out positively nor negatively. In the second half he put in a strong performance. Some important clearances, pressures, etc. However his passing really wasnt thaz ambitious. He mostly played safe with 2 or 3 somewhat forwaed minded passes. He had that great sequence going forward which bumped his rating for me, but even at the end of that sequence he was a bit nonchalant and almost got dispossessed in a dangerous area. All in all i would definitely describe his performance as very good/strong. Not more than that.
These are one word summaries of the ratings level, but I have thought about what it means on a deeper level as well so it is not random. This is what makes sense to me. There are two biggest problems I have encountered: The first is that the most plays have a minor impact on result while few have a major impact so it is difficult to evaluate and describe someone who scores 2 goals but overall bad performance. This is why full descriptions might sound vague, but I found it to be the best way. If someone is interested, a general thought process was this: I started by defining 6s and 7s as sort of a middle ground rather than 4s and 5s because that is just the way humans think. A random example would be If someone was to ask you to rate how much you liked his homemade drink or something and you thought it was nothing special, you would probably say 7 rather than 5 (which is closer to average) because it is a societally neutral response. Saying 6 already presupposes something negative which is why I crafted rating scale that reflects that and which is why sofascore does that as well. I am not making this up. There is a science behind it: https://tonyflorida.com/ten-point-rating-scale-without-seven/ So 7 is a good/positive performance, but nothing special and 6 is okay/fine performance. 7 is given to a player who had some good minor moments but lacked real impacg while 6 is a performance for which you cant pinpoint anything bad about it, but it is not particularly good either. It is a nothing special performance in which player did his expected job, but offered nothing more than that and by doing so blended with the game. It is also given to quiet performances. It is fine. This is the core and from here Ive logically builded upon the rating system to introduce gradient. By the book, 8 would be a very good/strong performance in which player had a lot of good minor plays, but lacked a major impact like good goals and chance creation, goal saving actions etc. It could be thought about it like this as well: 6 is a net neutral impact on the result. 7 is a positive impact, 8 is a strong impact, 9 is a massive impact (few goal-worthy action) and 10 is an immense impact (multiple goal-worthy actions - what is known as "single-handedly") I mean I could go on and on rambling about it, but another important thing is to realize that any closed-ended rating will have a problem of differentiating the highest rated performance which means that not every 10/10 performance will be the same. That is inevitable on such scale. And most improtantly, I strongly dislike the idea of introducing things like "against a comeptitive team" and such because than it becomes impossible to get 10/10 rating against a smaller team even if player scores 3 great goals and provides 3 great assists which doesnt make sense. Solution to that problem is very simple - you ignore it and rate performances based on a relative impact on the game and then afterwards we can understand the cintext of the rating. Of course having a 10/10 performance against Georgia in a friendly match is not worth the same as 10/10 performance in the world cup final against France. The context tells us that when comparing perfirmances. However, I do take into an account context of the game whem evaluating performance. For example, creating a big chance from a crowded, well-defended area will be more valuable than creating the same level chance because of huge open spaces and mistake of an opposition. The difficulty and "competitevness" of an opposition is taken into account like that. No need to do mental gymnastics to indirectly evaluate how difficult of the pass that was based on adjusted elo rating of the opposition when you can just see it in the game itself. So overall the rating scale is context-independent in that regard and the brilliant rating means that player's effort alone has accumulated and resulted in multiple goals for his team.
Excellent is when player does everything that is expected of him at the highest level. Brilliant is when player goes beyond any expectation - exceptional. Excellent is when student gets 100% on a test. Brilliant is when student solves problems that weren't even asked to be solved. If that makes sense. Also this is a problem with any descriptor and rating scale.
Turkey 0-3 Portugal - Bernardo Silva and Bruno Fernandes on target as former champions reach last 16 at Euro 2024 - TNT Sports Turkey: Bayindir 6, Celik 5, Akaydin 5, Bardakci 5, Kadioglu 5, Calhanoglu 5, Ayhan 5, Kokcu 5, Akturkoglu 5, Akgun 5, Yilmaz 5 Subs: Demiral 6, Yazici 6, Yüksek 6, Yildiz 6, Güler 5 Portugal: Diogo Costa 7, Diaz 7, Pepe 9, Mendes 8, Palhinha 7, Vitinha 7, Fernandes 8, Cancelo 8, Bernardo Silva 9, Ronaldo 8, Leao 7 Subs: Antonio Silva 7, Semedo 7, Rúben Neves 7, João Neves 7, Neto 7 Georgia 1-1 Czech Republic - Patrik Schick cancels out Georges Mikautadze strike as both sides retain qualification hope - TNT Sports Georgia: G Mamardashvili 7, S Kverkvelia 5, G Kashia (c) 5, L Dvali 6, O Kakabadze 6, A Mekvabishvili 5, G Kochorashvili 5, H Tsitaishvili 6 (63’ Lochoshvili 4), G Mikautadze 7 (88’ Kvilitaia 5), K Kvaratskhelia 5 (82’ Lobzhanidze 4), Z Davitashvili 6 (62’ Chakvetadze 5) Czech Republic: J Stanek 6, T Holes 4, R Hranac 4, L Krejci 5, T Soucek (c) 7, V Coufal 8*, L Provod 6 (81’ Barak 6), P Schick 7 (68’ Chytil 5), A Hlozek 4 (55’ Lingr 6), V Cerny 4 (55’ Jurasek 5) Belgium 2-0 Romania - Youri Tielemans and Kevin De Bruyne help Red Devils bounce back at Euro 2024 - TNT Sports Belgium: Casteels 7; Castagne 7, Vertonghen 7, Faes 6, Theate 6; Onana 6, Tielemans 7, De Bruyne 8; Lukebakio 7, Lukaku 7, Doku 7 SUBS: Trossard 5, Carrasco 7, Mangala 6, Debast 6 Romania: Nita 7; Ratiu 5, Dragusin 6, Burca 7, Bancu 6; Marius Marin 6, Razvan Marin 6, Stanciu 5; Man 7, Dragus 5, Mihaila 7 I think I'd give an entertainment rating of 6 to Turkey vs Portugal, 6.5 to Georgia vs Czech Republic, and 7.5 to Belgium vs Romania which for sure I enjoyed watching - it was free flowing and enterprising from the start and pretty much all the way through I thought, with Belgium putting in an impressive display and Romania showing some ambition to go forwards quite a bit too. For my rolling idea of 'Tournament XI' after the first two group games I think I'm settling on this in the end, but at the very least I'd have De Bruyne (7.5, 8.15, 7) as right on the cusp of taking Gundogan's place now....(first rating in brackets in bold is kind of my estimate for a rolling tournament grade for the players chosen; I guess even though I haven't been trying to give any grades to performances that if I had their averages at this point might be in the same ballpark too, or at least not very much below - next two are Sofascore average and TNT Sports average, for comparison, that I'm looking up as I type this post!): Casteels (Belgium, 7.5, 7.45, 6.5); Kimmich (Germany, 7.5, 8.15, 7), Dragusin (Romania, 7, 7.15, 6.5), Saliba (France, 7, 7.1, 6.5), Theo Hernandez (France, 7, 7.25, 6.5); Kante (France, 8.5, 7.55, 7.5), Fabian Ruiz (Spain, 7.5, 8.6, 7); Musiala (Germany, 8, 7.95, 8), Gundogan (Germany, 7.5, 7.95, 7.5), Gakpo (Netherlands, 7.5, 7.9, 6.5); Morata (Spain, 7, 7.35, 7)
I see the Sofascore top 10 atm is Fabian Ruiz (8.6), Mamardashvilli (8.35), Eriksen (8.2), De Bruyne (8.15), Kimmich (8.15), Kroos (8), Musiala (7.95), Gundogan (7.95), Cucurella (7.95), Gakpo (7.9) Here is 90min.com's top 8 players of Matchday 2 (Nico Williams, Gundogan, Baumgartner, Fabian Ruiz, Bernardo Silva, Musiala, Hojbjerg, Cucurella) The best players at Euro 2024: Matchday 2 - ranked (90min.com)
Yes, I tend to think like that too (eg if I think Messi played better vs Man City in 2014/15 than vs Leverkusen when he scored multiple goals it's not by default because it's Man City and Leverkusen respectively, but due to the ease of access to goal scoring opportunities vs Leverkusen and the quality of general play vs Man City, in context seeing the plays develop - not that I say it's invalid for someone to rate the performances the other way round necessarily).