Chelsea head Big 5 club rankings with 90.4% of matches played by non-English players

October 10 – The epithet that the English Premier League is a league that just happens to be played in England is reinforced by the latest stats ranking from the CIES Football Observatory that show 12 of its clubs in the top 100 in Europe according to the percentage of domestic league minutes played by expatriates since the start of the season.

Chelsea head the list of Big 5 clubs (4th overall) with a 90.4% of minutes played by non-English players this season. Arsenal come second (16th overall) with 84.1%.

To make the Top 100, 59.7% or more minutes have to have been played by non-domestically qualified players. While the Premier League leads the Big 5 with 12 clubs in the Top 100, Italy’s Serie A is not far behind with 9 clubs in the Top 100.

In contrast, the Bundesliga has six in the Top 100, La Liga has three (neither are Barcelona or Real Madrid), while France has just two (PSG and Monaco).

Three Cypriot clubs top the ranking Apollon Limassol (99.8%), Anorthosis Famagusta (95.3%) et AEK Larnaca (91.5%).

The CIES says: ‘Only three teams out of the 466 included in the analysis did not yet field expatriate footballers in domestic league games this season: Oleksandriya (UKR), Veres (UKR) and HIFK (FIN).

“In total, expatriates played 41.6% of minutes available. At league level, this figure varies from 80.2% in the Cypriot top division to 15.0% in Serbia.”

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Source: CIES Football Observatory

The data for all leagues and clubs surveyed can be found in the CIES Football Observatory Digital Atlas.

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