Arsenal began their reign as Premier League champions with a routine win over Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, a party atmosphere that masked a startling statistic: the beaten club has sent more players to the World Cup than Real Madrid.
Research by Football Benchmark shows Crystal Palace have 12 players at this summer’s tournament, two more than Real Madrid’s ten. The Premier League has supplied 163 players for the World Cup — 60 per cent more than the next league — and 39 of the 48 competing nations have at least one Premier League player.
“Arsenal began their title defence with a win over Palace, who have more World Cup players than Real Madrid.”
England’s squad includes 20 players from the Premier League, rising to 21 if Marcus Rashford is counted. That is more than other major European nations: Spain have 17 La Liga players, Germany 18 from the Bundesliga, France eight from Ligue 1, and Portugal six from Liga Portugal. Real Madrid do not have a single player in the Spanish squad.
Manchester City have provided more players than any other club, with 19 in total. Crystal Palace’s 12 are: Jean-Philippe Mateta and Maxence Lacroix (France); Dean Henderson (England); Chris Richards (USA); Daichi Kamada (Japan); Yéremy Pino (Spain); Chadi Riad (Morocco); Daniel Muñoz and Jefferson Lerma (Colombia); Ismaïla Sarr (Senegal); Evann Guessand (Ivory Coast); and Jørgen Strand Larsen (Norway).
Andrea Sartori, Founder and CEO of Football Benchmark, said: “The FIFA World Cup has always been football's biggest stage but the data illustrates how much the tournament has evolved.”
Premier League chiefs will see the statistics as vindication of the Elite Player Performance Plan, launched in 2012. Fourteen years on, academies are producing elite players who are starring for England and Europe’s top clubs — Harry Kane at Bayern Munich, Jude Bellingham at Real Madrid, and Anthony Gordon, who recently joined Barcelona for £70m.