On foreign players in the Premier League
Posted on Jun 30 2008 | Tagged as: Sport
It’s often claimed that the number of foreign players playing in the Premier League has a detrimental effect on the English national team.
But the two teams contesting last night’s Euro 2008 final, Spain and Germany, have 41% and 51% of their respective domestic leagues made up of foreign players. The Premier League has 63%.
If the flood of foreign players into the domestic leagues did adversely affect a country’s national team’s performance, and a 10% difference in the number of foreign players only translated into a one-goal difference in international tournament success, would a further 12% really make so much greater a difference that a country wouldn’t even qualify?
Or is it more likely that England are just crap?
NB * In Italy (who lost a quarter-final to Spain on penalties), 36% of players in Serie A are foreign.
* You’d probably have to take account of the size of the countries’ native populations to look at this properly.
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