Representation of Professional Soccer Leagues in the 2018 World Cup
This chord diagram looks at which professional soccer leagues rostered World Cup players are in currently in anticipation of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The English Premier League comes to mind as one of the most successful, wealthy, and competitive leagues in the world, but is it backed by the amount of players participating in the World Cup?
Taking a look at the chord diagram below, it shows that, unsurprisingly, 5 European leagues (as well as their lower tiers) dominate the rest: the English Premier League (with 123 players represented), the Italian Serie A (with 55 players represented), Spanish La Liga (with 81 players represented), Ligue One (with 53 players represented), and the German Bundesliga (with 52 players represented)
Other notes:
- With the powerhouse that Brazil usually is, you'd think their league would have more representatives. The visualization shows only 8. Looks Brazil's league isn't seen as competitive and players tend to flock to the bigger European leagues.
- Only teams from the World Cup were included, except for Italy, Netherlands, and Ukraine, as I saw that they had a lot of players come from their leagues
- The data used is not the official club rosters for the world cup. Official rosters aren't released until late May, so the data includes only current rostered players from recent friendlies.
Chord Notes:
- Hover over the outer group to see the total amount of players represented from that country's league
- Hover over each individual chord to see which country (World Cup team) that league's players come from
- If the color is the same as the outer group color (i.e. blue for england) the chord that is blue represents the same country