Capello Index still live on the internet
It threatened to undermine the Football Association before the World Cup, and now it threatens to embarrass both the FA and Fabio Capello: the controversial Capello Index refuses to go away.
On Monday afternoon the online player-rating system, which was endorsed by the England manager, was still very much accessible despite Capello’s calls for the website to be taken down on Saturday.
It had initially been designed for every player at the 2010 World Cup finals to be given a rating, but it was feared that the website would merely act as an unnecessary distraction.
Before matters got out of hand, Capello was quick to ensure that the system would not be implemented during the finals, and then later said that he wanted nothing to do with it at all.
Regardless, the website began to attract unwanted attention at the weekend as it went live; and Capello, who only held on to his position as England head coach by the skin of his teeth following a poor World Cup campaign, has been forced to apologise for this latest embarrassment.
However, there appears to have been confusion over Capello’s role in how the players are rated. Every England player was given a mark out of 100 for their performances in South Africa, but the manager himself had no bearing on the actual ratings – it was all based on statistics and mathematics.
As a result of the unwanted headlines, Capello is now bidding to have his name removed from the website to avoid further problems.
The FA wouldn’t have foreseen these kind of issues with the stern Italian when they hired him back in 2008, and it came as a surprise to hear that Capello was involved in such a project.
However, Capello’s son and agent, Pierfilippo, has revealed that his intentions were only ever innocent and he has never made a profit from the system. He was simply interested in how the ratings matched up to his own.
The panic has all been a storm in a teacup - not helped by the media’s coverage. And within the next few days, the Capello Index should be taken offline – or, at the very least, it will no longer have the England boss’ face plastered all over it.
And then hopefully, just hopefully, that’ll be the last any of us ever hear of it again.
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