Player performance: World Cup Second Round (7th January 2014)

The final day of the World Cup's round of 16 is also the first on which the players' official Ballsometer™ ratings become publicly available.

Argentina v Switzerland

Angel Di María - 8
Kept going, tearing Ricardo Rodriguez apart despite his final ball often going astray, and eventually holding his nerve to slot home the winner.

Lionel Messi - 8
Still determined to orchestrate proceedings despite having approximately 3cm² to play in. When he finally broke free, he made a telling contribution.

Stephan Lichsteiner - 9
Seemed even more determined than his full-back colleague Rodriguez to keep motoring forward despite his team’s obviously defensive set-up late on. The fact that he lost the ball high up the pitch to allow Argentina to score only underlines his ballsy approach. Gets extra man-points for looking like he was about to cry, only to hold it in. 

Diego Benaglio - 8
In a tournament of many fine goalkeeping performances, this was outstanding from Benaglio. Made a string of great saves and kept putting himself in where it hurts.

Fabian Schär - 7
Despite an Argentine onslaught, defended manfully alongside Johan Djourou.

Josep Drmic - 6
I don’t want to be negative on the first day, but he really should’ve done better than lamely chip into Romero’s hands when through. He gets voted down for lack of composure - to differentiate it from Dzemaili’s late miss, that was just bad.

Belgium v USA

Romelu Lukaku - 7
Changed the game by overpowering the USA defence in the build-up to the first goal, before slotting home the second. Fairly manly.

Kevin Mirallas - 6
See Drmic above. The clearest of several Belgian chances in normal time and he blew it.

Tim Howard - 9
An unbelievable performance, even better than Benaglio's

Geoff Cameron - 7
Got a yellow card, so by default was more aggressive than his team-mates.

The rest of the USA team - 5
Way too passive, lacking any counter-attacking threat and completely letting Belgium dominate.


Special mention goes to Luis Suarez, who had the Balls to apologise for his bite on Giorgio Chiellini - after admitting that it was a bite after all - in a very similar vein to his apology for biting Branislav Ivanovic just over a year ago. Can’t call him inconsistent.