Share of club minutes played by exports in the top-9 leagues, by country of origin, 2025/26

Summary · Question 7 of 14

English exports played a median 33 % of their club's minutes (90 % bootstrap interval 26–38 %, n = 208), 7th of 8 by the median; 7 of the other countries’ intervals overlap it.

How to read it: one row per country, sorted; the dot is the median share of his club’s minutes that a country’s exported player keeps, the thin line the range across its exports. English exports are the green row. Further right means exports who play a larger share of their club’s minutes.

Country-by-country figures

GER Germany n = 262 · 90 % bootstrap interval 34 %–46 %

42 %

ITA Italy n = 201 · 90 % bootstrap interval 30 %–42 %

37 %

ESP Spain n = 464 · 90 % bootstrap interval 33 %–40 %

36 %

FRA France n = 395 · 90 % bootstrap interval 28 %–40 %

36 %

BEL Belgium n = 253 · 90 % bootstrap interval 29 %–39 %

35 %

NED Netherlands n = 372 · 90 % bootstrap interval 30 %–40 %

35 %

ENG England n = 208 · 90 % bootstrap interval 26 %–38 %

33 %

POR Portugal n = 268 · 90 % bootstrap interval 24 %–36 %

29 %

How we know

As an analytics question In numbers: median share of a club's 2025/26 minutes kept by players abroad, by country of origin.

What we did We worked out what share of each club's playing time the player actually got, took the median over each country's exports and resampled the players to put an interval on that median.

Sources Median share of club minutes (player minutes ÷ club matches × 90) for players with the country's nationality at a top-9 club, one row per player; 90 % percentile-bootstrap interval, 2 000 resamples of players, seed 42. Premier League is itself one of Europe's top-9 leagues; here 'abroad' means the other 8.

What this means

Once in a top-9 league, English exports play a median 33 % of their club’s minutes. Several countries have few exports, so the intervals are wide and the ranking of medians is loose. The measure describes playing time, not performance, and says nothing about the players who did not move.

What this does not show

Performance per minute, the strength of a club within its league beyond a goals-scored proxy, and exports outside the nine leagues.

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