The website footballperspectives.org has today published a paper written by three CIES Football Observatory researchers: Drs Raffaele Poli, Roger Besson and Loïc Ravenel.
The paper is available to download for free here. footballperspectives.org brings together research - or experienced-based contributions - from academics studying the game and from people working within it on issues affecting football today.
Driven from data collected within the context of the latest Demographic Study, the CIES paper shows the impact of financial inequalities on squad make-up throughout Europe.
The authors notably report that "the proportion of full internationals drops from 46% for big-5 clubs to 15% for fourth echelon leagues". At club level, during the first semester of the current season, Manchester City FC has fielded 24 full internationals, the highest figure in Europe. Manchester City is also the team employing the highest number of players with international caps in 2012 (19).
These figures raise the issues of player hoarding and competitive balance in European football. This is a growing problem which will be addressed in the 2013 edition of the CIES Football Observatory Annual Review to be published next June - shortly after the end of the five major championships.
The full Demographic Study and other publications of the CIES Football Observatory may be purchased here.
About the CIES Football Observatory
The CIES Football Observatory was set up in 2005 under the name of the Professional Football Players Observatory (PFPO). Since 2011, it is one of the cornerstones of the vast CIES Observatory project, dedicated to the statistical analysis of sport in all its diversity. Click here for more information.
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