Croatia no.1 football exporting nation per capita in the world
- by croatiaweek
- in Sport
(Photo credit: Светлана Бекетова/Soccer.ru/CC)
Croatia is ranked 8th in the world when it comes to the most players playing abroad, and first per capita, a report from the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) has revealed.
The 380th edition of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presented the countries with the most players abroad in 135 leagues worldwide.
With 400 Croatian players playing abroad, which was 81 more than in 2017, Croatia was ranked in 8th place.
In first place was Brazil with 1,219 players abroad, followed by France with 978 players abroad and Argentina with 815 players abroad.
England was fourth with 525, followed by Germany (441), Columbia (425) and Spain (409).
If the list was based on number of players per capita, Croatia would be ranked first with a population of just over 3.8 million, the lowest among the top 8.
International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES)
To further show how much impact Croatian players have abroad, this year a Croatian player will be playing in the Champions League Final (Luka Modrić) for the 11th year in a row, and there is a Croatian on both teams in the Europa League Final – Borna Barišič for Rangers and Kristijan Jakić for Eintracht Frankfurt.
You can see the report here.
