Where the World Cup's Final 8 Actually Play

I love the World Cup, but I don’t typically follow soccer otherwise. I wondered where players in the last 8 teams played professionally.

The league scoreboard

Count up all 88 starters across the eight quarterfinal lineups and here is where they play their club soccer. Click a league bar to filter, pick a team, or search for a player:

The Premier League supplied more starters than La Liga (Spain) and Serie A (Italy) combined. Every single one of the eight teams started at least one Premier League player, including Morocco, Argentina, and Switzerland. Germany’s team did not make the quarterfinals, but the Bundesliga still put nine players on the field. That is the quiet flex of club soccer: your league can outlast your national team.

My favorite single data point: Manchester City had seven starters spread across four different countries. Four for England (John Stones, Marc Guéhi, Nico O’Reilly, and Elliot Anderson, whose £116 million transfer from Nottingham Forest was announced two days before the round of 16 and technically completes when he returns from the tournament). Plus Erling Haaland for Norway, Jérémy Doku for Belgium, and Rodri for Spain. If Manchester City were a country, it would have out-represented Morocco’s entire domestic league, which contributed zero.

Three things the table tells you

Norway’s goalkeeper is unemployed. Ørjan Nyland’s Sevilla contract expired July 1, mid-tournament, so he started a World Cup quarterfinal as a free agent.

Spain is the only team that mostly stays home. Seven of Spain’s eleven starters play in La Liga. Compare that to Morocco, whose eleven starters are scattered across seven different leagues and not one of them Moroccan. England is the mirror image of Spain: nine of eleven starters play domestically, and the two exceptions are Bellingham and Kane.

Messi is still on the sheet. At 39, playing his club soccer at Inter Miami alongside Rodrigo De Paul, he started and won a World Cup quarterfinal in Kansas City. MLS put two starters in this table, the same number as Belgium’s entire domestic league.

I just thought it was interesting.