The first round of the World Cup is over, 16 countries have made it. But which of the big soccer leagues have provided the success stories? Or are there no differences?
Before the start of the World Cup, the Football Association (FA) released a press statement that the English League compared to the other professional soccer leagues has provided the maximum number of players to represent their national squads. Indeed out of the 736 registered players in the World Cup, the English League provided 107 players. Other big leagues like the Bundesliga represent about 70 players, the Serie and La Liga put in 59 and 54 players, respectively.
The big four contributed a total of 290 players to the World Cup. And out of this total, the English League had the lion’s share of 107 players (38% of the total), the Bundesliga had 24%, the Serie and La Liga, followed with 20% and 19% respectively.
This gives rise to the question, that amongst the big four, which league has provided players that have influenced their country’s fortune, be it goals and/ or tackles, which are objective measures, or played a pivotal part in their country’s performance, in less quantifiable terms, which is harder to do.
Soccerblog decided to do a little study on the objective indicators of performance, namely which league has provided the most success in that country going forward to the second round, the number of goals, and the number of tackles
The English league is represented in 25 countries, the Bundesliga in 23 countries, the Serie in 18, and La Liga rounds off with a representation in 12 countries. Some countries have players represented from more than one of the big leagues, for e.g., Argentina.
Out of the 16 countries that made it to the second round only Ecuador relied mostly on players from their domestic league with the exception of Ulises De La Cruz of Aston Villa. Mexico and Ukraine also had just a handful of players playing from the big four, notably Rafael Marquez (Barca) and Andrei Shevchenko (AC MIlan). The other 13 countries had three or more players from the big leagues.
The national squads of England, Germany, Italy, and Spain comprise a majority of players drawn from their domestic leagues. England has 21 players from the EL, Germany has 21 from the Bundesliga, Italy has a full complement of 23 Serie players, and Spain has 18 from La Liga. All four countries have made it to the round of sixteen.
The EL has significant representation (3 players or more) in 13 countries, the Bundesliga in 8 countries, the Serie in 8, and La Liga in 5. There is an overlap in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Ghana, Australia, France, Switzerland, and Spain that also have 3 or more players from two or more of the big leagues.
7 countries were exclusive to the EL without any significant representation from the other 3 major leagues. Similarly, 3 countries had mostly Bundesliga players, and Italy was dominated by the Serie players. Spain also has a large EPL representation in their national squad (5 players).
Only two countries with significant EL representation made it to the second round, Netherlands, and England. Poland, T&T, Ivory Coast, the USA, and South Korea were eliminated. The Bundesliga was more succesful with two out of the three, Sweden and Germany made it past the gates, except for Iran. Italy was succesful too but they had no non-Serie representation. The Serie and La Liga were more successful when in combination with the Bundesliga and/ or the EL as seen in Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Ghana, Australia, France, Spain, and Switzerland moving onto the round of 16.
Of the 114 goals scored in the first round, 65 came from the players in the big leagues (a whopping 58%). The spoils amongst the big four were distributed with the EL leading with 22 goals (34%), La Liga with 17 (26%), the Bundesliga with 15 (23%), and the Serie with 11 (17%). The percentage of goals were relatively in proportion to the league representation, except for La Liga that only had 19% of the major league player total (54/ 290) but accounted for a disproportionate 26% of the goals.
In the first round, there were 15 players with 9 tackles or more in the EPL, the Bundesliga had 16, the Serie had 7, and La Liga 6. The total tackles for the 15 EL players was 153, the Bundesliga 16 totalled 184, and the Serie 7 had 89 amongst them, with the 6 La Liga players reponsible for 66 tackles.
Amongst the elite tacklers, (9 tackles or more), the EL players average 10 tackles, the Bundesliga, 12, the Serie 13, and La Liga 11. Germany had 88 out of the Bundesliga best 184 tackles explaining part of the German success. The Germans not only attack well and are good at scoring goals but they are also more likely to challenge every possession by their opponents.
So in conclusion, although the EL has far greater representation than the other leagues, which is impressive in itself, the EL players seem to provide less impact as compared to players from other leagues. The La Liga with the smallest representation, is by far the best when it comes to scoring and they also seem to be able to tackle better than their EL counterparts in this World Cup. They also seem to be better at combining with other league players to increase their country’s chances of success. These numbers are just an indication of the differences between the leagues and are not to be interpreted as a barometer of individual player perfomances which are highly subjective and not easily discernible. More studies need to be done with statistical analysis to come up with definitive answers.
More FIFA stats
P.S. I am still an Arsenal fan and love watching EPL soccer.