January 23 – Manchester City have come top of another table. Their latest chart-topping performance is a ranking teams according to the percentage of players signed from foreign clubs.
CIES Football Observatory have looked at the clubs in the Big 5 European leagues and at games this season. Man City have 17 players (77.3%) recruited from overseas out of 22 players used so far this season in domestic league games.
The ranking is not nationality based, but looks at the country of the club they were signed from. Hence it is not a measure of domestic players against overseas players.
Chelsea are second in the ranking with 76.2% of their players from overseas clubs and Lazio 73.9%. Sevilla, Leipzig, Paris St-Germain and Udinese all have more than two thirds of their players recruited from overseas clubs.
Of the 29 clubs who are above 50%, nine are in the Premier League.
At the bottom end of the table are Athletic Club Bilbao (one out of 23). Burnley (9.1%) and Bournemouth (9.5%) are the lowest ranking English teams.
The CIES authors say: “In general, the most competitive clubs sign a greater percentage of players from foreign teams than lesser performing ones. However, this is not a fatality. Liverpool, Juventus, Real Madrid, Napoli, Manchester United, Barcelona and Tottenham all signed less than half of current squad members from abroad.”
Source: CIES Football Observatory
See the full Transfer Network report at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr31/en/
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