Berlin, July 09: A software company says Paraguay ranks at the bottom when it comes to misbehavior at the global soccer tournament.
Staff at The Ritish Office Of Information Builders (IBI) tracked a string of alternative statistics during Germany 2006, including dives, feigned injuries, referee intimidation, and tantrums even players who didn't sing their national anthem.
According to their findings from watching TV broadcasts of the 32 teams' names, Italy leads in dives (32), France in tantrums (28), Paraguay in fake injuries (12), and Serbia and Montenegro in players not singing the anthem (31).
Croatia, France, Italy and Portugal are tied in bullying the referee incidents with five, although Croatia played half the games (three) than the others did.
Information builders devised the "IBI foul play index" by awarding points for yellow and red cards, bullying the referee, dives, fake injuries and tantrums.
The total is then divided by the number of games played.
Paraguay leads the tournament with an index of 45, followed by Italy 40) and the Netherlands, Ivory Coast and Portugal (37).
Trinidad and Tobago was the best-behaved team the tournament, with a foul play index of just 14. Next were Brazil, Costa Rica and Sweden (all 15) and the U.S. (16).
Bureau Report
