27% of Premier League starting places go to English players

The FA named 25 players on 6 November for the England team. Of those, 18 play in the Premier League, the top league in England. The England coach picks from the country's players, and the list shows where they play. Hence the question: how many of the players who start games in each league are from the country itself?

A starting place is one of the 11 spots a team fills at kick-off, so a player who starts 30 games fills 30 of them.

In the Premier League this season, up to 2 November, there were 1,980 starting places in 90 matches. English players took 537, about 27 in every 100. In Serie A it is 28 in every 100, almost the same share. In the Brasileirão, Brazil's top division, it is about 71.

The question matters now because of the November international break, the days set aside for national-team matches, when each coach picks from the country's players.

The count comes from the Soccer Addicted archive, the site's database of matches, with each game's line-up and each starter's nationality, one per player, from the data provider's records, calculated on 6 November 2026.

How many starters are from the country in each league?

It runs from 27 in every 100 starting places, in the Premier League, to about 8 in every 10, in Japan's J1 League. The Brasileirão sits near the top, at 71.4%. Serie A is at 28%, close to the Premier League.

The count allows only a rough ranking: the J1 League and the Brasileirão above the other 5, LaLiga above the other 4 in Europe, and the Premier League and Serie A at the bottom.

Matchdays, the sets of games in which every team plays once, run from 8 to 13 in Europe and Japan. They reach 34 in Brazil. The Bundesliga has the fewest matchdays in the count, 8.

Do the Premier League and Serie A have the same share of home-country starters?

They have almost the same share: 27 in every 100 in the Premier League and 28 in Serie A. The gap of 0.4 points is too small to say one passed the other.

With Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish players counted alongside the English, the Premier League reaches 31.1% this season, up to 2 November.

Has Serie A always had so few Italians?

No: in 2015/16, the first full season with complete data, about 42 in every 100 starting places went to Italians. Now it is about 28.

The count was 3,543 of 8,356 then. It is 602 of 2,188 now. The 14.9 percentage-point fall lies outside the margin of error, which is how far random variation can move a number built on few games.

The line shows Serie A and the Brasileirão falling, with a gap in the middle: from 2023/24 to 2025/26 the archive has no line-ups for Europe, apart from Ligue 1 in 2024/25. Each league starts at its first full season with complete data, so the 2014/15 figures stay out.

Have the Brasileirão and the other leagues changed?

Only 2 have really changed, the Brasileirão and Serie A: in 2016, about 92 in every 100 Brasileirão starting places went to Brazilians. This season, up to 5 November, it is about 71. The 20.8 percentage-point fall also lies outside the margin. With the same 34 games per team, the 2023 Brasileirão gave 80.7%.

In the other 5, the count claims no change. The Premier League, LaLiga, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and the J1 League stay inside the margin. LaLiga is close to 2017/18. Ligue 1 is lower than 2016/17, but 9 matchdays cannot confirm a fall.

How many players from the country, each counted once, have started?

Here each player is worth 1, not 1 per game: in the Brasileirão, 435 Brazilians started this season, up to 5 November. In Serie A, 112 Italians did, up to 2 November.

Each row is compared only with itself, since leagues differ in matchdays and teams. Serie A had 112 Italian starters against 142 in the same 10 games of 2022/23. The Premier League had 97 against 107.

Where else do English players start games?

Outside the Premier League, where they number 97, the other 9 top-division leagues in the archive hold fewer English starters: the biggest group is in Serie A, with 14. The 10 leagues in the table are the 7 in the count plus Portugal, the Netherlands and Mexico.

Each country has more starters in its own league than in the other 9 in the table. The archive has no Saudi Arabia, Turkey, MLS, Belgium or Scotland, and the rows do not add up: a player who changed league in August can appear in 2.

After Serie A come Ligue 1, with 9 English starters, the Bundesliga, with 6, LaLiga, with 4, and Portugal's Primeira Liga, with 3.

Where do each national team's called-up players play?

In England, Italy and Spain, most called-up players play in the country's league; in Brazil, they do not: 6 of 26. England's squad has 18 of its 25 players in the Premier League, and the side plays Croatia on 12 November and Spain on 15 November, in the Nations League.

In England, 18 of the 25 called-up players play in the Premier League. In Italy, 23 of 31 play in Serie A. In Spain, 19 of 27 play in LaLiga. For Germany and France the list of names was not read, so the table gives only the fixtures.

How does the count treat players with two passports?

Each player enters with one nationality only, the one the data company records, not the national team's.

In the lists of Brazil, England and Italy, the records match the team for 74 of 77 players found. Lucas Perri, of Torino, called up by Brazil and listed as Italian, counts as Italian when he starts in Serie A.

How was the count made?

Each game has 22 starters, 11 per team, and each takes a place. The count adds the places of all games, so players who play more weigh more, not just squad members.

Being from the country means holding the nationality of the league's country, as the data provider's records shows it, one per player. A league's country is the most common nationality among its starters: Brazil, England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France or Japan. In the Premier League, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish players count as from abroad.

For the share, the count divides the country's places by those with a nationality on record, and the places without one are left out.

The count covers 7 leagues. It takes the full seasons the archive holds since 2014/15 (2015 in Brazil and Japan) and the season under way, up to each league's last game before the break. Each timeline starts at the first season with complete data.

The line-ups of 2024/25 and 2025/26 in Europe are missing, apart from Ligue 1 in 2024/25, and so are the Brasileirão's of 2025. The 2024 Brasileirão is out because 14.5% of places have no nationality.

With 8 to 11 matchdays in the European leagues, a gap of a few points can be random noise. The CIES Football Observatory counts something else, the player who grew up outside the club's country, by minutes played or by squad, so its numbers are not comparable with these.

So, are the starters in the Premier League English?

In Brazil and Japan, most starters are from the country; in England and Italy, a much smaller share. England's squad shows the gap: 18 of 25 play in the Premier League, before the Nations League games against Croatia and Spain. Anyone who hears that a league lacks home-country players can ask whether the count is of the squad or of starters, and look at where the called-up players play.

In my reading, the question about who starts is more useful than the one about squads, because it shows who actually fills the places. The other side of the same count remains, the starters from abroad: which countries the foreign players come from?