Foreigners: Who They Are and Where They Come From

Foreigners play for Arsenal London or Inter Milan. Foreigners made England’s footballers so bad, that they couldn’t qualify for Euro 2008. Foreigners now make England’s footballers so good, that they will easily qualify for the World Cup in 2010.

The Bundesliga currently employs 497 players, of which 260 players are foreigners (52,3%). That’s the fourth highest percentage in Europe, only topped by the Swiss Super League (52,9%), the Portuguese SuperLiga (53,8%) and the English Premier League (62,3%). To complete the numbers: Serie A (39,7%), Ligue 1 (38,6%) and Primera Division (36,8%). The latter three leagues still have limitations regarding the number of non-EU players allowed, which to a degree explains the relatively low percentages compared to the Bundesliga and Premier League. So far so good.

But where do they come from? I dug into the extensive player database of transfermarkt.de to find out. I focused most of my attention on the Bundesliga of course and since the transfer window is about to open again soon, all of these numbers will be terribly outdated in just a couple of months.

Note: In cases of dual citizenship, only the first nationality is considered.

1. Brazil (35 players)
2. Croatia (12 players)
3. Serbia (11 players)
4. France, Switzerland and Czech Republic (10 players)
5. Netherlands, Turkey, Bosnia & Herzegovina (9 players)
6. Poland (7 players)
7. Portugal, Austria, Romania, Cameroon (6 players)
8. Denmark, Italy, Cote d`Ivoir, Greece, USA (5 players)
9. Canada, Japan, Sweden, Peru, Hungary, Argentina, Ghana, Bulgaria (4 players)
10. Finland, Belgium, Slovakia, Albania, Georgia, Nigeria (3 players)

Brazil are the world’s biggest exporter of football players and the Bundesliga is one of their best customers – the fourth best to be precise. The clear number one is unsurprisingly the Portuguese SuperLiga (131), followed by Italy’s Serie A (41) and the Turkish SüperLig (37). To fill in the rest of Europe’s Big 5: Ligue 1 and La Liga (26), Premier League (20). Croatia leads the way of ex-Yugoslavian countries, who if involuntarily reunited, could challenge Brazil for the top spot in this ranking. Players from the Balkans are certainly all the rage among Bundesliga scouts at the moment. Another clear pattern seems to be, that all of Germany’s neighboring countries have a relatively high amount of players plying their trade in the Bundesliga. If it wasn’t for Norway’s Tippeligaen (6), the Bundesliga and Premier League would be the joint top destination of American players. I developed a theory about the connection between major US, British or NATO military bases in Germany and the clubs US players tend to join but had no time to follow it through. I got as far as: Mönchengladbach / Joint Headquarters (British Army/NATO) and Kaiserslautern / Ramstein Air Base (US Army). Cameroon lead the Bundesliga’s African delegation. The country was one of the few short lived German colonies prior to the first World War, but I would presume that has no impact on todays player transfers. Having five Italian players playing in the Bundesliga is a quite new development. I think when Luca Toni arrived, he was the first Italian player to join the Bundesliga in about half a century. The Bundesliga is currently the top destination for Japanese players, also thanks to VfL Wolfsburg who have recently signed two Japanese players and are hot on the heels of Kaisuke Honda to make it three. The signings seem to be independent from a possible soft spot for Japanese players by Felix Magath though, as he is probably already working on Schalke’s summer transfer strategy. It could have something to do with Volkswagen trying to better position itself on the Japanese market? To say the Bundesliga is the top destination for Turkish players is more or less correct as well – less because most of the players didn’t have to move to Germany, as they were born there in the first place.

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Category: Data