Digging into Gooch’s Low Casterol Index – The Unadjusted Data
Felt that Onyewu’s seemingly strong performance in the Confederations Cup merited more than merely letting the Casterol Index’s slight go uninvestigated. So, I picked five other defenders and compared a variety of statistics that I thought could arguably be relevant to whether a player is a good defender. The selected players (and their rank among defenders): Lucio (1); Andre Santos (2); Carles Puyol (6), Matthew Booth (13), Jonathan Spector (29), and Oguchi Onyewu (34).
To keep the post manageable, it is being broken up into three parts. The first, this post, contains the raw data on the six players selected for comparison. The second will contain the data adjusted so that everyone’s stats is based on 450 minutes. The final post will contain the players’ rankings in each category and our analysis.
Here is the raw data as taken from fifa.com. Most are self explanatory (for Team Goals For and Against, we reviewed the players’ minutes and only used goals scored while the player was on the field).
| Lucio | A. Santos | Puyol | M. Booth | Spector | Onyewu | |
| Score | 9.13 | 8.7 | 7.98 | 7.01 | 3.92 | 3.14 |
| D. Rank | 1 | 2 | 6 | 13 | 29 | 34 |
| Minutes | 430 | 335 | 270 | 480 | 450 | 450 |
| Team GF | 14 | 10 | 7 | 4 | 8 | 8 |
| Team GA | 5 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 9 | 9 |
| Yellows | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| FC | 3 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 7 |
| FS | 4 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 9 | 5 |
| Handball | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Goals | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Shots | 8 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| SOG | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Solo R | 3 | 14 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| TS | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| TSL | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| LB | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| Assists | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| DPA | 0 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| TCK | 8 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 10 |
| TGP | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| CLR | 15 | 4 | 0 | 15 | 7 | 21 |
| RB | 15 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 14 |
| CC | 9 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 9 |
| CCR | 60% | 25% | - | 20% | 29% | 43% |
| Passes | 211 | 274 | 154 | 197 | 174 | 136 |
| SPR | 89% | 88% | 85% | 80% | 48% | 47% |
| MPR | 84% | 87% | 91% | 80% | 62% | 73% |
| LPR | 84% | 75% | 74% | 63% | 41% | 52% |
| DC (km) | 41.4 | 36.9 | 27.2 | 50.9 | 51.3 | 45.9 |
| DCP (km) | 16.1 | 16.7 | 11.1 | 17.7 | 16.0 | 13.5 |
| DCN (km) | 16.0 | 13.7 | 10.3 | 22.2 | 24.0 | 22.2 |
