May 12 – Manchester United are making a habit of being second. Behind Brighton and Hove Albion, Man Utd are ranked second in an analysis of the amount of minutes played by home-grown players in the Premier League this season.
Brighton top the ranking with 30.1% of minutes played by home grown players. Man Utd at 27.2% (15 players), are ahead of Chelsea (24.5%, 8 players) and Arsenal (20.1%, 7 players).
Seventh ranked Liverpool had 13.3% of minutes played by 15 home trained players. Premier League winners Manchester City had just two home grown players making up just 4.9% of minutes played (ranked 17th). Bottom of the Premier League ranking is relegated Fulham with only 2 home grown players making up 0.3% of minutes played.
The data from the CIES Football Observatory looked at club-trained footballers (those who have been for at least three seasons between the ages of 15 and 21 in their employer club) in teams from 27 top divisions of UEFA member associations.
Looking at Europe’s Big 5 leagues, Spanish clubs dominate with seven of the top 10 ranking positions. RC Celta de Vigo with 49% of minutes played by home trained players lead the table.
“Among the big-5 leagues, only the Spanish Liga (15.7%) is above the European average (13.2%), with a minimum of 5.0% in the Italian Serie A. English teams (12.6%) relied more on club-trained footballers than French (11.8%) and German (10.5%) ones,” said the CIES report authors.
Looking across all 27 leagues, the CIES commented: “Home-grown footballers played a majority of domestic league minutes also at Dynamo Kyiv(60.2%), Sigma Olomouc (52.0%) and FC Slovácko (51.1%). At the level of the five major European championships, the highest employment rates after Celta Vigo were observed for two Basque sides: Real Sociedad (48.5%) and Athletic Club (40.6%). AS St-Étienne (35.0%), Brighton & Hove Albion FC (30.1%), FSV Mainz (25.0%) and Genoa CFC (20.9%) top the table in the remaining big-5 leagues.”
To see the full report click here.
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