Summary · Question 5 of 14
Where English-eligible players with 450+ minutes played in 2025/26, by league tier
48 of 144 played abroad: 38 in the 9 top-ranked leagues and 48 (100 %) in a league no stronger than the Premier League by UEFA-coefficient multiplier.
How to read it: each bar is a destination tier for the players abroad, with its player count in front and the median UEFA-coefficient multiplier of its leagues. The sideways moves are a subset of these bars and are listed under the chart.
The 48 sideways moves, by league: FRA-Ligue 1: 9, ITA-Serie A: 9, BEL-Pro League: 4, ESP-La Liga: 4, GER-Bundesliga: 4, POR-Primeira Liga: 4, SUI-Super League: 3, DEN-Superliga: 2, HUN-NB I: 2, NED-Eredivisie: 2, TUR-Süper Lig: 2, AUT-Bundesliga: 1, CRO-HNL: 1, POL-Ekstraklasa: 1.
How we know
As an analytics question In numbers: destination-league tier of every English-eligible player's 2025/26 row, split into top-9, sideways and other abroad moves.
What we did We looked at where every eligible player was actually playing that season and grouped each one by how strong that league is compared with the player's own home league.
Sources Destination league of every English-eligible player's 2025/26 row with at least 450 minutes, one row per position group; sideways = destination multiplier ≤ English league multiplier, both UEFA-coefficient multipliers (league strength: two estimates, § Methodology). Premier League is itself one of Europe's top-9 leagues; here 'abroad' means the other 8.
What this means
Of the 144 rows, 96 are at home and 48 abroad, 38 of them in a top-9 league. The counts are administrative and a player counts once per position group he played in. They say where players were in one season; they do not say whether a move helped a player or how a player abroad would have done at home.
What this does not show
Players in leagues this pipeline does not fetch (absent, not counted as abroad), loans and transfer fees, and the second club of a mid-season move, whose minutes are summed into one row.
Data snapshot: FBref tables fetched 14 September 2026, snapshot commit ef7dbd4 · code: src/pathways.py · status: exploratory, not pre-registered · all limitations