NEW YORK (AP) — Xavi Hernandez was voted player of the tournament after Spain won the 2008 European Championship. Teammate Sergio Ramos didn’t even make the all-tournament squad.
Yet they tied as the two best players at Euro 2008. At least according to a study out of Northwestern University’s engineering school, which tried to quantify the performances of soccer players.
The report was published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.
Luis Amaral knows he isn’t exactly unbiased when it comes to watching his beloved Portugal. The Northwestern engineering professor wanted to find a way to objectively evaluate players in a sport with few statistics because of the rarity of goals.
