The Globalization of the Premier League

The image above compares the birthplaces of all the Arsenal football players of the 1980's with the birthplaces of all the Arsenal players of the 2010's. It is very noticeable that in the 1980's the majority of Arsenal players were born in the UK or Ireland. The only Arsenal players born outside the UK or Ireland in the whole of the 1980's were Vladimir Petrović (Serbia) and Sigurður Jónsson (Iceland). In the 2010's more Arsenal players were born outside the UK than were born in the UK.

All other English Premier League clubs show a similar pattern. In the 1980's the majority of players in the then English First Division were born in the UK. In fact many players were born very close to the clubs that they played for.

Probably the biggest factor in making the EPL more cosmopolitan was the rebranding of the First Division into the English Premier League and the subsequent influx of television money which resulted from that rebrand. 

I've made three visualizations comparing the birthplaces of EPL players in the 1980's with those of the 2010's, for Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City. You can easily make your own maps using Wikidata. 

Here is the Wikidata Query for mapping the birthplaces of Manchester United players. You can use this query for mapping the birthplaces of any sports club. You just need to edit the query to point to the team of your choice. You can do this by editing the Wikidata ID number for the team in line five of the query -

BIND ( wd:Q18656 AS ?team )

Where 'Q18656' is the Wikidata ID number for Manchester United.

For example here is a map showing the birthplaces of all Miami Dolphins players.

 

Hat-tip: Chris Groves