Euro 2020, a feast of football featuring 24 nations with squads making up 620 players. Many of the players are household names as are the teams for which they play. But for every Christiano Ronaldo there is a Stefan Spirovski and for every Real Madrid there is a Dunajska Streda (or in my case a Bristol Rovers). The mighty Rovers were my childhood club and (they're currently not so mighty and find themselves languishing in the 4th tier of English football) and one of the Finnish goalkeepers, Anssi Jaakkola, is on their books.
It got me wondering where the players play their club football. At an aggregate level, across all 24 squads, almost 24% of the players in Euro 2020 play their club football with English clubs. Over 58% play with clubs in the Big Four European leagues of England, Germany, Spain and Italy.
The map below shows where the 620 players are distributed across the countries where they play their club football.
Proportion of Squad Players playing in 'Home' Country
England - 88%
Italy - 85%
Russia - 85%
Ukraine - 69%
Germany - 65%
Netherlands - 48%
Hungary - 46%
Scotland - 46%
Czech Republic - 42%
Spain - 42%
Turkey - 38%
Croatia - 23%
Portugal - 23%
France - 19%
Wales - 19% **
Poland - 16%
Denmark - 15%
Switzerland - 15%
Sweden - 12%
Austria - 12%
North Macedonia - 12%
Belgium - 8%
Slovakia - 4%
Finland - 4%
** If 'home' is defined by the country in which the club is located. A further 72% of the Welsh squad plays for English clubs which are in the same league as the Welsh clubs (Swansea and Cardiff).
Geographical Diversity of Squads
The most geographically diverse squad is that of Finland which draws on players playing their club football in 16 different countries.
16 - Finland
14 - North Macedonia
13 - Slovakia
10 - Hungary, Croatia
9 - Belgium, Sweden
8 - Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic
7 - Turkey, Denmark, Netherlands
6 - Portugal
5 - Ukraine, Spain, Russia, Germany, France, Austria
4 - Wales
3 - Italy, England
2 - Scotland