Show me numbers.

On January tenth next year, FIFA, in conjunction for the first time with France Football will announce the winner of the Ballon d’Or. There are twenty three nominees in total and as is usually the case with awards of this nature some argument can be made about the validity of certain names on the list. No-one doubts, for example that Miroslav Klose enjoyed a stellar World cup, especially in comparison with Wayne Rooney but the Manchester United man scored thirty-four goals in total last year. Set alongside Klose’s meagre return of six for Bayern Munich this simple stat could tell us perhaps Rooney is more worthy of a nomination that the German.

Is it time then to base the greatest of individual awards on statistics? Should it be broken into four categories for goalkeeper, defender, midfield and attacker? How could it work? Well UEFA already compensate when deciding their Golden Boot winner. Goals from the supposed tougher leagues count for more than the weaker ones. Couldn’t a system such as this be used to decide the best? For attackers and midfielders: goals, assists and pass completion would form the basis for the award. With additional points for intercepts and successful tackles. The basis for defenders would be the opposite with intercepts and tackles forming the crux.

Lies. Damned Lies and statistics. The genius of this ubiquitous statement is that it can be applied to anything. Most surely football. There was a certain masochistic glee from Jose Mourinho last season when pondering the statistic that Barcelona-a team his Inter had just knocked out of the Champions league at the semi-final stage-completed five hundred and forty eight passes to Inter’s sixty seven.

Barca managed to win the game but lost the tie on aggregate. Mourinho called it his greatest loss. Based on my stat award idea then, in this game, the superb discipline of Estabian Cambiassio would be worth less than Sergio Busquets merely prompting Barca forward. Static sports such as Baseball and NFL are made for stats. The fluidity and ever changing nature of football make it difficult to grind it into mere numbers. It must also be noted that FIFA in particular cannot be relied upon to get rankings right as anyone who follows their world rankings could testify.

The stats of course cannot tell the whole story. But they can tell a hell of a lot. We do not need stats to realise that Paul Scholes rarely gives the ball away or that Michael Essien covers a lot of ground but it does help crystallize the enormity of what the modern greats can achieve. If awards like the Ballon d’Or could not conceivably be based on stats, then more of them are needed in ink and on television to better appreciate the interceptions of Michael Carrick or the blocks of Vincent Kompany. there are a number of good websites that help in this but they are still mostly for the die-hards.

Stats need to be common. Your average twelve year old should be able to tell you Michel Arteta’s pass completion rate or the average amount of Vidic clearances. By highlighting this more. By making stats like this universal, the more mundane arts of football can get the appreciation it deserves.