According to data provided by Transfermarkt.com, the most popular and valuable (in terms of total player value) domestic leagues also tend to have the most foreign players.

I was interested in seeing how the commonness of foreign players in domestic leagues has changed over time. To do this I plotted the cities of birth of current and former players as a point on a world map. The larger the point, the more players are from that particular city.  There are likely uncaught errors that popped up during the (not especially rigorous) data cleaning process, so I would appreciate any corrections.

English Premier League (65% foreign)

Italian Serie A (57.1% foreign)

German Bundesliga (49.8% foreign)

 

French Ligue 1 (46.4% foreign)

Spanish La Liga (44.6% foreign)

 

Compare Earliest and Latest Seasons

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