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Lance_E_T_Compte t1_iwlvspy wrote

This is really interesting!

It seems useful to understand more about lots of things...

  • Which countries have well-developed top-flight leagues capable of keeping their players. (Look at England, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Surprising [to me] are power houses like Argentina and Brazil.)

  • You can also see the reach of the Premier League and Bundesliga to get players from across the world. (I was surprised that 11 countries field players from the MLS.)

  • Some countries field a very disparate team. (The Italian game is played different than the English and different from the Germans.) Does that have any impact on success?

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The_mystery4321 t1_iwmg9i9 wrote

With Qatar and Saudi it's got nothing to do with the quality of the league, it's about the players not being good enough to get contracts anywhere else.

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will221996 t1_iwm5bgi wrote

>well-developed top-flight leagues

It's not about this at all. The best developed leagues are England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France in that order. On top of that, you have different levels of inequality within leagues, for example huge in France(dominated by PSG),big in Germany(Bayern slightly less dominant) and Spain(a few big clubs) and small in Italy(lots of pretty strong teams) and England(strongest "weak" teams). A Spanish player will choose to play frequently at a top Italian club over sit on the bench at Real Madrid.

The other really big factor, the reason why Saudi and Qatar and to a lesser extent England have so many domestically based players is money relative to talent. Also why Brazil and Argentina who have popular domestic leagues have so many players playing abroad. Almost every league has some sort of cap for foreign players or quota for domestic ones. The exceptions are Germany and Portugal without quotas or caps and Brazil where there is so much talent there's very little need to ever import players. Asian leagues generally have very restrictive, 3-5 caps on foreign players. The gulf leagues especially have a lot of money. Thus, a decent domestic player is worth their weight in gold. In England, you need to have a certain number of domestically trained players, a hangover from the EU days as you cannot directly discriminate against players from other parts of the EU. There is far more money in English football than there is in European football, and as such a good English trained player, most of whom are English or British, is worth a lot to English clubs.

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MeMoses t1_iwm79g2 wrote

>The best developed leagues are England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France in that order.

What? Italy and Spain over Germany?

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will221996 t1_iwmas47 wrote

Spain over Germany is a bit harsh I guess. From the Global Sporting Salaries survey in 2019, the most recent one I think, salary rates in Italy are higher than in Spain on average per player, when you exclude the 3 giant clubs, real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus(who had the third highest wage bill in football that year).

That year, clubs with average per player salaries in GBP between 1.9 and 4 million were: 4 in Germany, 5 in Italy, with Lazio very close but just under, 2 in Spain. Spain had the poorest clubs at the bottom, followed by Germany.

The main reason I had Germany below those two however is because of how much Bayern dominates. In Italy you have 6 very competitive big clubs, in Spain you have 3, in Germany you just have Bayern Munich.

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MeMoses t1_iwmd4u9 wrote

Development of leagues is not solely based on salaries paid. It's about quality of clubs, infrastructure, fan services, attendances and much more.

>The main reason I had Germany below those two however is because of how much Bayern dominates. In Italy you have 6 very competitive big clubs, in Spain you have 3, in Germany you just have Bayern Munich.

That's when you only look domestically. But we have CL, EL, Conference League to look at how they do against each other and even if Bayern wins every domestic title, the other teams in the Bundesliga still do well internationally against Spanish and Italian clubs.

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