December 15 – Manchester United and Manchester City players played more times for their countries than any other players at clubs in the Big-5 European leagues, according to research from the CIES Football Observatory.
CIES says this is a record number of matches played at Big-5 league level and re-inforces club complaints that they
Manchester United and Manchester City squad members played 120 national A-team matches in 2015. In third position is Chelsea (111), ahead of Paris St-Germain (106) and Barcelona (99).
English Premier League clubs have more players on international duty than any other league with five of the top 10 clubs in the ranking being English and 10 of the top 20.
Seven out of the 10 top ranked clubs qualified for the Champions League knockout stage. The only exceptions are Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Inter Milan – Spurs and Inter were not playing in the Champions League this year.
Real Madrid have the most footballers with national A-team caps in 2015 (19 players), followed by Manchester United (18), Chelsea, Tottenham and Juventus (17 players each).
CIES finds that Manchester United players represented 10 national teams. Such is the depth of Man Utd’s squad is that Sergio Romero played more games for Argentina (13) than for Manchester United (4).
Man Utd list of players and international matches in 2015:
• Sergio Romero, 13 matches for Argentina
• Marcos Rojo, 11 matches for Argentin
• M. Darmian, 10 matches for Italy
• Daley Blind, 9 matches for the Netherlands
• Wayne Rooney, 8 matches for England
• Morgan Schneiderlin, 8 matches for France
• Memphis Depay, 8 matches for the Netherlands
• Phil Jones, 7 matches for England
• Bastian Schweinsteiger, 6 matches for Germany
• Chris Smalling, 6 matches for England
• Anthony Martial, 6 matches for France
• Marouane Fellaini, 6 matches for Belgium
• Patrick McNair, 5 matches for Northern Ireland
• Antonio Valencia, 4 matches for Ecuador
• Juan Mata, 4 matches for Spain
• David De Gea, 4 matches for Spain
• Michael Carrick, 3 matches for England
• Luke Shaw, 2 matches for England
To view the full chart go to http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2015/129/en/
2015 ranking of internationa player appearances from Big-5 league clubs
Source: CIES Football Observatory
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