At least seven of every 10 players in Liga Portugal are foreigners. The percentage of national players on Portuguese fields, 28.22%, is exactly the same as that of English players in the Premier League. The two championships are those with fewer national athletes in the squads of the 18 and 20 clubs that, respectively, make up them. At the opposite extreme, analyzing the 10 leagues that invest the most in Europe, is Chance Liga, from the Czech Republic, closely followed by the millionaire Spanish La Liga.
With the maturity of the Bosman Law, the Maastricht Treaty and other social and political factors, the free movement of footballers became the rule. But in some countries it is more the rule than in others, concluded the work of Paul Kemp, researcher at the website Sportingpedia, when analyzing and comparing the 10 main European leagues with data from Transfermarkt and other platforms.
In Portugal, of the total of 489 players spread across first division clubs, 351 are not Portuguese. In England there are 379 foreigners out of 528 players, which leaves the two leagues with the aforementioned percentage of 28.22%.. The best example of a multinational team in Portugal and Europe is Estrela da Amadora, with 27 foreigners, one more than Verona, from the Italian Serie A, and four more than Gallic Lyon and British Sunderland, both with 23.
With 29 players, Athletic Bilbao only has Spaniards – or rather, Basques, according to the club’s century-old policy. A sign of the times, nine of them have dual nationality, from Laporte, born in the French Basque Country, to the Basque-Ghanaian brothers Iñãki and Nico Williams.
Collectively, the Chance Liga, the Czech championship, stands out as the only league where national players make up close to three-fifths of the total: 279 Czech players out of 475, i.e. a participation of 58.74%, a highest in the sample.
But perhaps more relevant is the fact that soon after come the Spanish, owners of one of the richest leagues and, therefore, more potential buyers of global talent – the aforementioned Athletic helps with the numbers… In total, La Liga registers 290 national players out of 517, that is, 56.09%, placing it between the Czech and Dutch championships. The Eredivisie is the third and last league with national players above 50%: 254 of 497 (51.11%).
From the Turkish league, with 53.03%, foreigners are the majority. Then come the German Bundesliga, the French Ligue 1, the Belgian league and the Italian Serie A, the one that in absolute numbers, 367, has the most foreigners, before we get to the most international of all, the English and Portuguese.
And does the number of foreigners in a country’s domestic league translate into the performance of the teams? It can be deduced that no. After all, the Czech Republic, whose league is the most national, is experiencing a crisis in its selection: it did not qualify for the 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 World Cups and is still competing in the play offs to reach the 2026.
The English team is going through its best moment – semi-finalist in the 2018 World Cup and finalist in the last two Euros – since 1966, despite so many foreigners on the island. And the Portuguese, two-time champion of the League of Nations, in 2019 and 2025, and European champion, in 2016, ditto. In fact, the English and Portuguese enjoy, according to critics, golden generations.
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