Congratulations. You are a pioneer. You are about to travel to the edge of football science. You are about to witness the Castrol Performance Index.

Dr Henry Stott and Dr Ian Graham have been working with one of the leading sponsors of Euro 2008 to develop a highly sophisticated player performance rating. It fuses the pitchside data to which Castrol has access with the computer modelling of the Fink Tank and it rocks.

The Castrol Performance Index (CPI) tracks every move on the field and assesses whether it has a positive or negative impact on a team's ability to score or concede a goal.

The Fink Tank has divided the pitch into zones, each of which

has a goal value. This value represents the probability of the ball ending up in the other team's net starting from that area of the field. The nearer the zone is to the opponents' net, the higher its goal value.

When a player passes, or runs with the ball from one zone to another, and does so successfully, added to their performance total is the goal value of the zone into which they have passed minus the goal value of the place they passed it from. Thus they are being rewarded for the increase in the probability of scoring that resulted from the action they took.

A less sophisticated system might record successful passes, the CPI records the difference the pass made. A long pass from midfield into the danger area would be rewarded very highly. A short pass to someone near by hardly at all.

Similarly, conceding the ball, by a poor pass or being tackled, is penalised depending on how much trouble the mistake is likely to land the team in.

The CPI is also able to split up the rewards of a goal between penalising the goalkeeper for letting in a shot he should have saved and rewarding the attacker for scoring a dream goal that had no business going in. This is computed, again, by using the probability of scoring into different parts of the net from different parts of the pitch. The goal, like the pitch, is divided into zones.

The graphic shows you who the CPI thinks has done well, with

the best players having accumulated the most CPI points. The Fink Tank will publish an update each week and there will be a player of the tournament. If you cannot wait, there will be daily updates on the sweet CPI website at castrolindex.com