So I am not sure this is really the right forum for this but I've been having a curious thought. In America we have the top league in 4 sports. Its safe to say that the above 90% of the best players in football, baseball, hockey, and basketball play in US leagues. Sure some stay home but the vast majority at some point take their skills to that league for either money or challenge. What I am curious about if we assume a 30 team soccer league with a 25 man roster cap (750 total players) what percentage of those players a playing in various leagues throughout the world? Just a thought exercise. I honestly have no clue but many of you likely follow things more closely than me and its something I am curious about.
The UEFA Champions League is pretty close to this. The two best teams in the world, currently, will be playing in a semi-final - Barcelona verse Bayern Munich; and the other two semi finalists are not far behind. All of them are better than their equivalents in the international game, including non-European countries like Brazil and Argentina. Bayern Munich are better than Germany. Both Real and Barca are better than Spain, etc... Also, the Champions League contributes to the predictabliliy problem that European leagues have. The best players want to play in it, so they gravitate to the clubs that always qualify, thus, ensuring that those same clubs continue to qualify. But, regardless, it is the highest level of soccer on the planet.
I understand that but its not really a league in the sense teams don't play a true regular season. I am just kind of curious how the world's best players are spread out by domestic leagues.
@ceezmad That chart is really interesting, but I don't think the World Cup is representative of all the worlds best players. Certainly the English league seems over represented considering its teams don't go far in the Europa or the Champions League.
It'd be nice to see a chart like this corrected for the Domestic bias in league selection. Like, how many non-Costa Rican World Class players are playing in Costa Rica? Is it none? I bet it's none.
I think you have to define "World Class". If you mean "World Cup" squad players, well, of the 2014 Costa Rican squad, 9 play domestically and 13 played internationally. I am not sure that equates to "World Class" players ( see Landond , for example). Here is the complete list of World Cup players, broken down by where they play club football: Brazil- 4 domestic, 19 international Cameroon-2 domestic, 21 international Croatia-2 domestic, 21 international Mexico-15 domestic, 8 international Australia-7 domestic, 16 international Chile-5 domestic, 18 international Netherlands-10 domestic, 13 international Spain-12 domestic, 11 international (only 3 domestic teams represented, though) Columbia-3 domestic, 20 international Greece-9 domestic, 14 international Ivory Coast-0 domestic, 23 international Japan-11 domestic, 12 international Costa Rica- 9 domestic, 14 international England-22 domestic, 1 international (Scotland) Italy-20 domestic, 3 international (France) Uruguay-1 domestic, 22 international Ecuador-8 domestic, 15 international France-7 domestic, 16 international Honduras- 11 domestic, 12 international Switzerland-7 domestic, 16 international Argentina-3 domestic, 20 international Bosnia-1 domestic, 22 international Iran-15 domestic, 8 international Nigeria-4 domestic, 19 international Germany-16 domestic, 7 international Ghana-1 domestic, 22 international Portugal-8 domestic, 15 international USA-9 domestic, 14 international Algeria-1 domestic, 22 international Belgium-3 domestic, 20 international Russia-23 domestic, 0 international South Korea-6 domestic, 17 international A couple of interesting points: Only Russia had all domestic players. England damned close, with Italy third. Ivory Coast had no domestic players, Ghana, Uruguay, Bosnia, Algeria each had one. Averages: 255 domestic players: 8 domestic players per team 481 international players: 15 international players per team
Interesting. Probably world class, if it just means good, or great, should not be defined by International soccer or the world cup, but instead by the market- what players are the highest paid? Or, perhaps just take the players who appear in the knockout stages of the Champions League, since that is the highest level of the sport? It would be interesting to work back and see what countries they are from. By the way, I say knockout stages because you do get some lesser teams in the group phase. The Guardian, I think, has a list the world 50 best players; and, it was pointed out, only two of them are native English speakers. (Rooney and Garreth Bale).
Don't insult FC BATE Borisov like that. They are Belarussian powerhouses. Is Rooney speaking English?
combing the graph and list, it looks like 4. But I really wanted to note how spectacular it was of xtomx to come up with the list, and ceezmad to find the graph. To get at the answer of this post notion, it would be a league that looked a lot like the champions league now does, with a few of the weaker clubs cut lose and replaced by the next best English, German, Spanish clubs. I'm not sure it would get you to the NFL level of talent dominance, but it probably would get you close to 90 percent of the top talent worldwide. Maybe toss in the top several SA clubs. This list which is completely subjective and years old (2012), gets at the point. It notes among the top 100 players one in SA and one in China (Drogba), and most were at clubs in the UEFA cl.
If you were to take the top three teams in each UEFA Champions League group, and add the Europa League group winners, you'd be very close to the world's top 36 clubs. Maybe the Copa Libertadores finalists should be in there too, but that's pretty much it. And of the world's top 750 players, probably 650-700 are within that group of clubs.
We can say things like this but Chelsea would probably lose club games in leagues like the Guatemalan league.
Played on a well groomed neutral site with something at stake, adequate time to scout and prepare, and no travel effects? No freaking way.
That's not what I said. Rich, western countries are more than willing to see their favorite teams play a sterile, homogenized game. That's not necessarily representative of the game though.
True, but the only things that are certain about this game are that the ball is round and the game lasts 90 minutes. And the latter isn't really that certain.
There was a great feature on Henry some years back in which he noted that it would be a huge mistake to view him as a pampered rich athlete and not the simmering anger filled competitor he'd become growing up in the Parisian suburbs. He insisted he still played every game filled with that same rage. I'm making that point because he is far from unique. The players of Chelsea certainly prefer the manicured fields of the major clubs, but many of them come from a very different place. In a competitive match, they'd adjust pretty well and quickly to any field (as we've seen them do against poorer clubs in the cups). Football is a funny game, so anything can happen. But at the very top, it doesn't really that often. There is a reason they're each making more than that Guatemalan club.
I don't know about that 650 to 700 estimate considering that the 36 clubs would have a combined 648 players in the 18 for a game. To show how often the 18th most used player (by minutes) on a club plays, Loic Remy of Chelsea has played 456 minutes in the 2014-2015 EPL. That's 14.5% of the possible minutes and an average of 13 minutes 2 seconds per game played by Chelsea including games Remy didn't play in. Mitchell Weiser, the 18th most used player on Bayern Munich, has played 19.8% of the possible minutes in the 2014-2015 Bundesliga. Keilor Navas, the 18th most used player on Real Madrid, has played 14.3% of the possible minutes in the 2014-2015 La Liga.
That's just gameday team, though. Include their squads (the big ones brim with quality) they'd have over 1,000 players. and your point is good in that Navas, Remy an Weiser very probably are among the top 700 players on Earth, and maybe top 300
I was thinking about this and the comments about Chelsea playing in central America. This is what I like about soccer- all the forms it comes in. CONCACAF qualifying, MLS, UEFA Champions League, and the world cup are all very different from each other for many reasons but all are really fun to watch. And, unlike, the NBA or NFL, they have threads and players that connect them together. I like variety, this is why I like college more than pro American Football even though the players are clearly inferior. This why I don't follow the NHL but then, every four years, become interested on Olympic hockey.