Players from 101 nations in the big-5 leagues
Since the start of the season, footballers born in 101 national associations participated in at least one big-5 league match. This represents 40.2% of the world population. The percentage would have been much greater if big-5 league clubs had also fielded Chinese (59.4%) and Indian players (76.9%). More information is to be found in the 66th edition of the CIES Football Observatory Big-5 Weekly Post.
France is the country with the highest number of locally born players fielded by clubs in the five major championships since the start of the season (440), followed by the four other nations hosting the big-5 leagues. However, only 181 players born in England played in the big-5 so far this season.
The most represented foreign origin overall is Brazil (117 players). At league level, the most represented foreign nations are France (45) in England, Argentina and France (29) in Spain, Brazil (20) in France, Czech Republic (14) in Germany and Argentina (51) in Italy.
Next week we will present exclusive data sourced from the upcoming 2014 World Cup Preview. For more information about this publication, please contact us at football.observatory@cies.ch
