Summary · Question 1 of 14

Five pathway measures: Denmark, Norway and Czechia, 2025/26

Five measures, from youth minutes at home to players in Europe’s top-ranked leagues, for Danish football and the two comparison countries used throughout the atlas. Each links to the page with the full evidence. The order follows a player’s path; it is not a causal chain.

Five-stage funnel: Danish football next to Norway and Czechia on the share of playing time young players get at home, the league's average age, the age of the first move abroad, the share of sideways moves, and players per million people in Europe's strongest leagues.
How to read it: one rung per stage of the argument, each on its own scale, so the dots show the distance between countries, not the size of the number. The filled green dot is Denmark; the open dots are the two comparison countries. Under each rung is which direction means a more open pathway. Hover a dot for the exact value.

  1. Playing time for under-21 nationals in the country’s own top league.

    Share of league minutes that went to players aged 21 or under

    DEN 15.3 % NOR 11.5 % CZE 6.4 %

    Clubs that gave those young players more than a tenth of their own playing time

    DEN 11 of 12 clubs NOR 12 of 16 clubs CZE 9 of 16 clubs

    Under-21 nationals who were regular starters, per club in the league

    DEN 2.50 per club (30 players) NOR 1.56 per club (25 players) CZE 1.06 per club (17 players)

    The regular-starter line is drawn at ten starts; at five it is 3.2 per club, at fifteen 1.6 (ten: 2.5).

    They are not used mainly as late substitutes: 14.6 % of the league’s starts went to them against 15.3 % of its minutes, and a starting under-21 was on the pitch for a median 77 minutes against the league’s 79.

  2. The age profile of the home league.

    Average age of a minute played in the league

    DEN 25.4 NOR 25.6 CZE 26.0

    Share of league minutes that went to players aged 30 or over

    DEN 19.5 % NOR 15.9 % CZE 21.1 %

  3. Age at the first season with real playing time in a foreign league.

    Median age at the first season with real playing time in a foreign league, over the players abroad today

    DEN 23 years (112 players) NOR 22.5 years (60 players) CZE 24 years (32 players)

  4. Moves abroad to a league no stronger than the home league.

    Share of players abroad in a league no stronger than their own (UEFA-coefficient multiplier)

    DEN 10 % NOR 22 % CZE —

  5. Players in Europe’s top-ranked leagues per million people.

    Players in Europe's top-ranked leagues, for every million people

    DEN 12.58 NOR 9.37 CZE 2.39

In the gap decomposition (descriptive, see its page), the channel with the largest contribution is how strong the domestic league is for Norway and how much playing time young players get at home for Czechia. It describes associations across 8 countries and does not say what would change the gap.

What this means

The five measures are associations, measured the same way for Denmark, Norway and Czechia and placed in the order of a player’s path. The order is not a causal chain: the page shows where Denmark differs from the two comparison countries, and it does not show which measure, if changed, would change the per-head count. Samples differ by measure and are given with each number.

What this does not show

  • Money: transfer fees, wages and academy budgets play no part in any number above.
  • How the academy and coaching set-up actually work day to day, which no public data source used here can see.
  • Agents, and how a move abroad actually gets arranged, which happens off any table this pipeline can read.
  • The direction of the arrow: a low share of playing time for young players at home could help cause a thin generation, or just as easily be a symptom of one — the five numbers above are associations measured the same way for every country.

Data snapshot: FBref tables fetched 14 September 2026, snapshot commit ef7dbd4 · code: src/pipeline_facts.py, src/pathways.py · status: exploratory, not pre-registered · all limitations

Explore the data

Five pathway measures

Five pathway measures

Four exhibits comparing Denmark with 8 peer countries: youth exposure at home, export route, how exports fare, and who made it.

Exhibit A — youth exposure at home

Share of a domestic league's total minutes played by its own nationals aged 21 or under, 2025/26.

* Σ minutes of players with the league country's nationality and age ≤ 21 at the season's start ÷ Σ minutes of all players in the league, 2025/26. Under-23 shares: DEN 21.2 %, HUN 22.6 %, CRO 22.7 %, NOR 19.8 %, AUT 16.5 %, POL 14.4 %, SUI 16.6 %, CZE 13.5 %. A league without a bar is not covered by FBref.

Exhibit B — export route

For every peer-country player on a 2026/27 top-9 roster: the age at the first top-9 season (full roster, and recent entrants only) and, for recent entrants, the league of the season before it. Danish exports: 65 players, median export age 22 (recent entrants 25, median 22), 60 % of the recent ones straight from the Superliga*.

CountrynRecent Age at first top-9 season (all)Age at first top-9 season (recent) DomesticStepping stoneOther top-9Not covered Censored
DEN Denmark 65 25 22 22 60 % 0 % 0 % 40 % 14 %
NOR Norway 37 17 21 22 53 % 0 % 0 % 47 % 19 %
SUI Switzerland 42 13 23 21 85 % 0 % 0 % 15 % 33 %
AUT Austria 37 13 23 22 54 % 8 % 0 % 38 % 35 %
CZE Czechia 15 7 23 22 0 % 0 % 0 % 100 % 20 %
CRO Croatia 39 10 23 24.5 60 % 10 % 0 % 30 % 31 %
POL Poland 30 13 23 24 38 % 23 % 0 % 38 % 20 %
HUN Hungary 18 11 22 22 91 % 0 % 0 % 9 % 11 %
SVK Slovakia 11 4 24 23 0 % 0 % 0 % 100 % 27 %

* Export age = age at the first season in any headline league, history back to 2020/21; a first appearance already in 2020/21 is censored. Recent entrants: first top-9 season 2025/26 or 2026/27, the only ones whose previous season lies inside the fetched window (2024/25 onwards for peer domestic leagues). Stepping-stone league: GER-2. Bundesliga, the one covered league below the top nine that is no peer’s home league. Not covered: no earlier row in the data.

Exhibit C — how the exports fare

Peer-country players at a top-9 club in 2025/26: median share of the club's minutes, and the club's strength within its league.

Median share of the club’s minutes

SVK Slovakia n = 17
76 %
HUN Hungary n = 15
57 %
CZE Czechia n = 26
50 %
SUI Switzerland n = 54
48 %
CRO Croatia n = 47
46 %
DEN Denmark n = 75
46 %
AUT Austria n = 44
43 %
POL Poland n = 45
41 %
NOR Norway n = 52
37 %

Median club goals-scored percentile within its league (club-strength proxy)

HUN Hungary n = 15
72 %
CZE Czechia n = 26
67 %
SVK Slovakia n = 17
60 %
AUT Austria n = 44
59 %
DEN Denmark n = 75
56 %
NOR Norway n = 52
56 %
CRO Croatia n = 47
55 %
POL Poland n = 45
55 %
SUI Switzerland n = 54
50 %

* Minutes share = player minutes ÷ (club matches × 90), 2025/26, one row per player-season. Club strength proxy: goals-scored percentile within league — clubs ranked by the goals their own roster scored that season (ClubElo was unreachable at run time). Both are medians over the country's exports; n per country in the bars.

Exhibit D — profile of those who made it

Goals + assists per 90, league-adjusted, in 2025/26 by the tier of the player's own league: domestic, stepping stone, top-9, or another covered league. Danish count and median against the median of the peer countries' values.

Profile table by tier and position group
TierGroupDEN nDEN medianPeer median nPeer median
domestic league FW 17 0.16 17 0.12
domestic league MF 61 0.09 59.5 0.06
domestic league DF 35 0.04 47 0.02
stepping-stone league FW 3 0.21 1.5 0.28
stepping-stone league MF 1 0.10 2 0.08
stepping-stone league DF 5 0.04 1.5 0.05
top-9 league FW 10 0.30 5 0.28
top-9 league MF 31 0.18 16 0.14
top-9 league DF 16 0.03 8 0.04
other covered league FW 8 0.13 6 0.16
other covered league MF 23 0.08 6.5 0.08
other covered league DF 14 0.02 5.5 0.02

* Tier = the league of the player's own 2025/26 season. Peer median n and peer median are medians across the peer countries present in that tier and group; a tier a country has no player in is absent, not zero.

Exhibit E — where Danish exports go

Of the 218 mapped Danish players, 105 play outside the Superliga.

  • top-9 Victor Nelsson · Morten Frendrup · Joachim Andersen
  • peer country league Kasper Jørgensen · Jonathan Asp Jensen · Emil Kornvig
  • stepping stone Marcus Mathisen · Kasper Davidsen · Zidan Sertdemir
  • other Asger Sørensen · Alexander Munksgaard

* Buckets by the league of the player's own 2025/26 season; a player is counted once per position group, like everywhere else on the page, so one with rows in two groups counts in each; the number in front of each bar is the player count, the median multiplier is the bucket's median league multiplier. Sideways: destination league multiplier <= the domestic league's multiplier.

F · The UEFA Euro 2024 squad by league tier

Where the 26 players named to the UEFA Euro 2024 squad played in 2025/26, next to Switzerland, Austria, Czechia. Tier = the league of the player's most-minutes 2025/26 row.

Minutes, multipliers and age cohorts by country
Country Median minutesMedian multiplier U2223–25 26–2930+
DEN Denmark 1158.5 0.788 0 2 11 13
SUI Switzerland 1942.5 0.798 0 3 9 14
AUT Austria 1719 0.788 0 7 9 10
CZE Czechia 1802.5 0.459 0 6 11 9

* 14 of the 104 squad players across the 4 countries have no 2025/26 row in the fetched leagues and are counted as unmatched (DEN 6, SUI 2, AUT 2, CZE 4).