March 7 – Only 29 players aged 27 or over have played for just one club since the start of their careers. The stats from the CIES Football Observatory cover Europe’s Big 5 leagues in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Of those 29 players 14 are at Spanish clubs including the celebrated trio of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets at Barcelona.
There were only two one-club players in the English Premier League – Tony Hibbert (Everton) and Andy King (Leicester) – and only three in Italy’s Serie A with Roma’s Francesco Totti being the stand-out name.
In contrast, Luca Toni, Totti’s former teammate both at Rome and in the Italian national team for the 2006 World Cup win, has played for 15 clubs over his career. Toni tops the list of players that have “more clubs than Jack Nicklaus”.
The list of 28 players who have had more than 10 clubs in their career include 13 Italians, six Spanish, five English and two German and two French.
The youngest player among the 28 big-5 league footballers who played for 10 or more clubs since the beginning of their professional career is the new Newcastle United signing Andros Townsend. He is still only 24 years old.
To see the full list go to http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2015/140/en/
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