Top Group Stage Players In Euro 2012 Using Offensive Match Impact Rating

Now that the group stage of Euro 2012 is over, we've applied the offensive Match Impact Rating (MIR)* to the tournament to see which players graded out the highest.

In terms of restrictions to make the leaderboard, a player needed to have played at least 150 minutes and scored a point (except for Robbie Keane, whom we included because he's on the LA Galaxy). Remember, an MIR of 70 and above is excellent, 40-60s is very good, good 30-40, average 25-29, below 25 is not so good. For an offensive defender, 25 and above is excellent, 20-25 very good, 10-15 average, below 10 is not so good. Without further ado, here's the leaders after the group stage:

To see the full leaderboard, click here (1-32), and here (33-63). Discussion below the jump.

If you were wondering what helped the Greeks advance, it might be they've got four players above a 36 MIR so far and one player, Karagounis, playing at the excellent level. What makes Karagounis so high on the list is not his one goal but his 5.83 fouls drawn per match, which was the most of anyone on the leaderboard. The same thing was true for Lewandowski who drew 5.33 fouls per match. However, he didn't have the help that Karagounis did. What prevented Gomez and Shevchenko from being higher on the list was they committed too many fouls and did not draw enough fouls.

For the quarterfinals, here's how things break down for the teams in terms of how many players they have in the Top 25:

Czech Republic (No. 13 Peter Jiracek, No. 19 Vaclav Pilar) vs. Portugal (No. 16 Cristiano Ronaldo, No. 18 Pepe)

Spain (No. 1 David Silva, No. 14 Fernando Torres, No. 21 Andres Iniesta) vs. France (No. 11 Franck Ribery)

Germany (No. 7 Mario Gomez) vs. Greece (No. 2 Giorgos Karagounis, No. 24 Dimitris Salpingidis)

England (No. 25 Steven Gerrard) vs. Italy (No. 4 Andrea Pirlo)

*For a introduction to the Offensive Match Impact Rating, see our post on it here.