Maradona's 1986 World Cup: Examining the Castrol Index.

Castrol, the British lubricant giant, has developed and publicized a system of ranking the performances of players at the World Cup tournament since 1966.

For the 1986 World Cup, won by Argentina, the ranking was as displayed in the image above.

The index ranks the top performing players according to the Castrol index. It acknowledges the performances of Jean Tigana, Careca and Gary Lineker in that tournament.

The amazing thing is that the index gives recognition to 5 players in the Argentine side as part of the top 10 players in the tournament, comparable to the 5 non Argentine players also recognized.

The index clearly shows that it was not a single handed victory for Maradona. The difference between his castrol score (9.80), and that of Oscar Ruggeri (9.42) is just 0.38. You could not say that Maradona out-performed any player in this list by a significant multiple.

Conclusively, the castrol index indicates a great team performance for Argentina at the 1986 World Cup, not the 1 man performance attributed to Maradona!