The top leagues in European football are the pinnacle of the sport, with the biggest clubs investing millions each year in reaching the top of the game. While buying a ready-made player can be very expensive, it is often a lot cheaper to develop a first-teamer from a young age. On top of this, local players who have come through the ranks often understand the club better and become fan favourites.
There have been some amazing players over the years to come through the academy and play for their local club, achieving great success along the way. In England most famously the ‘Class of 92’ saw five young Manchester United players rise through the ranks together before winning the treble in 1999. AC Milan legend Paolo Maldini joined the youth ranks in 1978 aged ten and didn’t retire until he was in his forties in 2009 following 647 appearances for his boyhood club. These examples of great players are just some of the multitude of homegrown talents that have played over the years.
However, in the modern world, the number of local players at the top level of the game has dwindled as it is increasingly easy to scout and purchase top talent from all over the world. Long gone are the days of the Lisbon Lions, Celtic’s 1967 European Cup-winning team who all were born within twelve miles of the stadium. In fact in the most recent Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea only three players out of the 46 in both squads were local lads.
We ask then, where in Europe is the most young homegrown talent produced? Furthermore, how much of this is from the local area? By studying every club’s first-team squad across Europe’s top five leagues we have been able to identify which leagues and clubs produce the most talent.
local
homegrown players
Athletic Club Bilbao
(Spain)
The club with the most local talent across Europe’s top five leagues is Athletic Club from Bilbao, this Basque-based team have a unique approach to recruitment which makes it unsurprising they top these rankings. As a matter of club policy, Athletic Club will only allow Basque nationals to play for the club, consequently, almost all of their players are born fairly locally. Current examples include centre back Yeray Alvarez who is from the local area and has been on the books for thirteen years.
local
homegrown players
Hertha Berlin
(Germany)
Hertha Berlin has been a team that have enjoyed little success in German football, and in recent years have been a mid-table Bundesliga side. However, they can celebrate the fact that they are the best German club for investing in local homegrown talent. There are currently seven players in the squad who are from the local area and came through the academy, most notably Arne Meier, and Kevin-Prince Boateng who returned to his boyhood club after fourteen years away.
local
homegrown players
Celta Vigo
(Spain)
Another Spanish team came in joint second place in the rankings as Celta Vigo currently has seven local homegrown players in their first-team squad. The Vigo based club has two players in Hugo Mallo and talismanic striker Iago Aspas who have both spent over twenty years at the club, with the latter first joining way back in 1995.
To work out which leagues were the best for producing homegrown talent and local players we looked at numerous different factors, including the average numbers of local and homegrown players across the leagues, as well as an aggregate overall score for each league.
Homegrown talent score of
Premier League
(England)
Despite not having any clubs in the top three for the total number of local homegrown players, the Premier League comes out top courtesy of consistency across the league. Ten Premier League clubs have over three local homegrown players in their squad, and teams’ average 2.75 local homegrown players.
Homegrown talent score of
La Liga
(Spain)
Spanish La Liga came in second with a score of 5,56. Only an average 36.63% of players produced by academies of La Liga clubs are actually from the local area, which is the lowest in Europe. On the other hand, La Liga sides averaged 2.3 local homegrown players per club.
Homegrown talent score of
Ligue 1
(France)
The French top division may have the longest serving player anywhere in the top five leagues, but they only manage to rank in third with an overall score of 4.54. Despite having 87 homegrown players (the same as La Liga), only 37 of these came from the local area of the club.
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years at
the club
Vincent Manceau
(Angers)
The current player to have spent the longest amount of time at a club in Europe's top five leagues is Angers’ right back Vincent Manceau. Frenchman Manceau is from the beautiful city of Angers, and joined the football club aged six back in 1995, since then he has been incredibly loyal to the club spending his entire 26 year career there to date. He broke into the first team in 2008 aged 19 and has since made 355 appearances for his boyhood club.
years at
the club
Iago Aspas
(Celta Vigo)
Celta’s scoring sensation Iago Aspas narrowly misses out on top spot, and would have taken the prize if it was not for his ill-fated three-year spell on Merseyside. The thirty three year old is from Moana just outside Vigo, and since joining Celta as an eight year old he has gone on to score 115 goals in 232 La Liga games for the club over his two spells.
years at
the club
Daniel Didavi/Hugo Mallo
(Stuttgart/Celta Vigo)
Two players came in joint third in the rankings having spent 22 years at their respective clubs. Attacking midfielder Daniel Didavi first joined local club Stuttgart in 1997, but due to a two-year spell at Wolfsburg has only been at the club for 22 years. Spanish central defender Hugo Mallo made his debut for Celta Vigo in 2009 and has gone on to make 341 appearances for the team he joined as an eight-year-old in 1999.
Club Data:
We added together all the homegrown and local homegrown players at each club and then ranked them by the number of the local players.
We also calculated the percentage of each team’s homegrown players who were local.
League Data:
To discover which league was the best for local and homegrown talent we decided to combine a number of factors to give each league a normalised score out of ten based on these factors.
These factors were: the average number of homegrown players, the average number of local homegrown players, the average percentage of local homegrown players, the total number of homegrown players, the total number of local players, and the number of clubs in the league with over three local homegrown players.
Player Data:
We went through the first team squads of all teams in the top five European leagues, and picked out any players who counted as a homegrown player (been at the club for at least three years before their 21st birthday).
We then separated these players into local and non-local homegrown players, by establishing whether or not their place of birth was within 30 miles (48km) of the club.
We also determined the length of time players had been at clubs by calculating the number of seasons since they first signed.
