Barcelona’s defender Dani Alves (pictured) took the lead in the FTBL ranking of Brazilian defenders after the Catalans’s 2:0 win over Inter Milan in the Champions League group stage game last Tuesday.

The gap between Alves and the former leader, Inter Milan’s Brazil international Maicon, was more than 20 rating points, but Alves closed that gap after earning 17 rating points in the game to boost his FTBL score to 111.62 points, while Maicon dropped 7.3 points to shrink to 109.36 points.

Alves will “defend” just 5.59 rating points in his next couple of games. If he fails to do that against Real Madrid this coming weekend, he could redress the bar against 2nd from-the-bottom Xerex in the following game. On the contrary, Maicon will have to “defend” more than 30 rating points in his next 2 games. This all suggests a change in the leadership is not that imminent.