Chelsea's Germany skipper Michael Ballack could be expected to boost his rating when he leads his country in a World Cup 2010 qualifier against Azerbaijan Wednesday; his plank to beat in the encounter will amount to just 5 rating points.

The Chelsea midfielder has an overall FTBL rating of 98.47 points at the moment and is somewhere in mid-table in our ranking of German midfielders. The top spot in that ranking is held by Bayern Munich’s Bastian Schweinsteiger with 123.54 points. Bastian will have a plank of 15 rating points to beat in the game.

Theoretically, Wolfsburg’s Christian Gentner, who has 106.1 points, could well jump into the race and grab the lead with a strong performance: he will have a plank of just 5 rating points to beat.