Which team has the most home-based players?

Of the leading teams, only Italy has the honour of having a team comprised purely of Italian-based players. This is not the first time though. The Azzurri did the same in 1994 as well.

But by far, Spain takes the cake for sticking to players from their own league as they did on 1990, 1994 and 1998. This year however they have players playing the English Premier League as well as in the Italian league.

England in 1998 had a squad of players playing in the local league but this time around that have two players from outside leagues – David Beckham from the Spanish league and Owen Hargreaves from the German Bundesliga.

Coming back to this year’s finals, Saudi Arabia too is made up of players from their local league. They have now qualified for the last four World Cups and have relied on Saudi-based players on all occasions.

On the other extreme is Ivory Coast whose squad is entirely made up of players playing in a foreign league.

So, with that aside, which country’s league is then best represented in the World Up this year?
Well, here it goes. Over 103 of 736 registered World Cup players are members of English club squads, followed closely by Germany with 73.