Experience as a teacher includes marking students work and essays. However, not all these works deserve the same weight in the final bulletin. Here are some ideas how to weigh players performances differently.

As a teacher it is my task to teach and educate children of different ages in different subject matters: sport and social sciences at university, business English at a private business school in Paris’ 15th Arrondissement as well as German and English at a private school. In the latter case, i am instructed to follow the guidelines provided by the ministry of education. These can be very different in nature according to the task: written expression, oral expression or listening comprehension.

Since I teach English and German at school, my emphasis is of course on speaking, listening and writing. The latter is the easiest part, while oral comprehension is quite difficult, particularly in German. The opposite is English as this language has become far more than just a subject at school; it has now become a culture, a global culture which surrounds us. This means, that the kids understand English quite well since they have YouTube and other platforms at their disposition where anglophone content is available 24/7.

This has an impact on my teaching as well as on my grading: in English points are far more difficult to come by than they are in German. Further, the nature of the test is also important: a short vocabulary test has less impact on the average mark than does have a three hour exam which counts three times on the average grade for the trimester. Oral presentations have similar importance.

This weighting has got me thinking: should not football players be graded differently, i.e. according to the task they are facing? One example to clarify this thought.

In the Bundesliga, Bayern are the best team by a country mile because of their almost indefinite finances and their clout when it comes to scouting and recruiting. However, whenever they are routing an opposition team that is clearly out of depth against Bayern, Kimmich & Co. should not get the same grading as their opponents, simply because the task was way too easy for them.

On the other hand, the opposition played well, the statistics say 35% possession, several shots on goal but no success; yet given the effort they have put in with clearly limited means and players should be receiving better grades simply because they did reasonably well. Thought, they conceded x number of goals which of course impacts on the overall grading of the team and those players who failed to mark their respective men in the decisive moment.

So if Gnabry and Sané do their best to beat underdogs Augsburg but fail to score more than one goal during 90 minutes, Augsburg will be lauded for their defensive structure and should automatically get better grades in the Kicker match report and perhaps in other apps which dish out these figures.

Magdeburg’s keeper Dominic Reimann received a 10 out of 10 for his performance against St. Pauli because Pauli had 12 shots on target and NONE went in, all were saved by Reimann. This was a stellar performance.

The idea would be to make this a fairer experience for the players of smaller teams who have little to no chance to compete with Bayern, let alone beat them. Fairness in sport may be an outdated concept, particularly off the pitch, where a few teams dominate their respective leagues as they please (there are always exceptions, of course!). This would also have an impact on market value as higher ratings indicate an aptitude to excel against higher rated players.

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