January 14 – England’s national team in 2015 was the youngest in European football, Scotland’s was the oldest, Serbia’s was the tallest and Chile have the shortest players, according to a data study compiled from the profiles of 50 national squads.
The report from the CIES Football Observatory looks at age, height, employer clubs and places of birth in determining characteristics of national team squads.
The analysis also looked at where players played their club football, and found that nearly 50% of international footballers played for clubs in one of the Big 5 European leagues in England, Germany, Spain, France or Italy.
This transfers through to the stat that 68.9% of minutes played were by footballers under contract with foreign clubs. England is the only squad who did not field footballers playing abroad.
CIES finds that: “In only 12 cases out of 50, this percentage was lower than 50%. Most of the countries finding themselves in this situation are home to wealthy leagues, either in absolute terms (England, Italy, Germany, Spain) or within their regional area (Ukraine, Turkey, Mexico, Iran, Tunisia).”
Algeria and Albania were the countries that relied most on players born out side their borders – Algerian had 21 players born in France while Albania had 17 players born outside the country. Overall 11.3% of players were born outside of the country they represented – a trend CIES said can be expected to increase.
The full report can be viewed at moc.l1734922479labto1734922479ofdlr1734922479owedi1734922479sni@n1734922479osloh1734922479cin.l1734922479uap021734922479">http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr11/en/
Source: all tables CIES Football Onservatory
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734922479labto1734922479ofdlr1734922479owedi1734922479sni@n1734922479osloh1734922479cin.l1734922479uap1734922479