Summary · Question 1 of 14

Five pathway measures: Spain, France and Portugal, 2025/26

Five measures, from youth minutes at home to players in Europe’s top-ranked leagues, for Spanish 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: Spanish football next to France and Portugal 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 Spain; 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

    ESP 4.8 % FRA 8.8 % POR 4.9 %

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

    ESP 7 of 20 clubs FRA 14 of 18 clubs POR 11 of 18 clubs

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

    ESP 0.70 per club (14 players) FRA 1.28 per club (23 players) POR 0.78 per club (14 players)

    The regular-starter line is drawn at ten starts; at five it is 1.2 per club, at fifteen 0.5 (ten: 0.7).

    4.7 % of the league’s starts went to them against 4.8 % of its minutes, so they start about as often as they play at all; in a start they played a median 73 minutes against the league’s 78.

  2. The age profile of the home league.

    Average age of a minute played in the league

    ESP 26.9 FRA 25.6 POR 25.3

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

    ESP 28.9 % FRA 20.2 % POR 14.2 %

  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

    ESP 25 years (132 players) FRA 23 years (205 players) POR 24 years (90 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)

    ESP 74 % FRA — POR —

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

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

    ESP 9.54 FRA 5.79 POR 25.19

In the gap decomposition (descriptive, see its page), the channel with the largest contribution for both France and Portugal is how strong the domestic league is. 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 Spain, France and Portugal and placed in the order of a player’s path. The order is not a causal chain: the page shows where Spain 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 Spain with 7 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: NED 24.2 %, FRA 14.4 %, BEL 16.4 %, GER 10.9 %, POR 9.1 %, ESP 16.9 %, ENG 6.4 %, ITA 7.3 %. 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. Not informative for this nation: La Liga and every peer's own league are themselves top-9 leagues, so the domestic / top-9 split has no content here; the exhibit is kept for comparability with other nations. Spanish exports: 368 players, median export age 22 (recent entrants 98, median 21.5), 0 % of the recent ones straight from the La Liga*.

CountrynRecent Age at first top-9 season (all)Age at first top-9 season (recent) DomesticStepping stoneOther top-9Not covered Censored
ESP Spain 368 98 22 21.5 0 % 0 % 0 % 100 % 33 %
FRA France 313 107 21 21 0 % 2 % 0 % 98 % 34 %
GER Germany 208 63 22.5 22 0 % 57 % 0 % 43 % 36 %
ITA Italy 144 36 21 22 0 % 0 % 0 % 100 % 32 %
ENG England 154 29 21 20 0 % 0 % 0 % 100 % 39 %
NED Netherlands 268 78 20 20.5 0 % 3 % 0 % 97 % 29 %
POR Portugal 176 40 20.5 20.5 0 % 5 % 0 % 95 % 36 %
BEL Belgium 208 55 20 20 0 % 0 % 0 % 100 % 32 %

* 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

GER Germany n = 262
42 %
ITA Italy n = 201
37 %
ESP Spain n = 464
36 %
FRA France n = 395
36 %
BEL Belgium n = 253
35 %
NED Netherlands n = 372
35 %
ENG England n = 208
33 %
POR Portugal n = 268
29 %

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

ESP Spain n = 464
60 %
POR Portugal n = 268
60 %
BEL Belgium n = 253
59 %
ENG England n = 208
55 %
GER Germany n = 262
50 %
NED Netherlands n = 372
48 %
FRA France n = 395
47 %
ITA Italy n = 201
45 %

* 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. Spanish count and median against the median of the peer countries' values. Not informative for this nation: La Liga and every peer's own league are themselves top-9 leagues, so the domestic / top-9 split has no content here; the exhibit is kept for comparability with other nations.

Profile table by tier and position group
TierGroupESP nESP medianPeer median nPeer median
stepping-stone league FW 0 — 2 0.22
stepping-stone league MF 1 0.09 4 0.09
stepping-stone league DF 1 0.08 1.5 0.03
top-9 league FW 38 0.31 22 0.28
top-9 league MF 153 0.14 82 0.15
top-9 league DF 117 0.06 62 0.05
other covered league FW 8 0.13 4.5 0.14
other covered league MF 24 0.10 5 0.08
other covered league DF 11 0.04 7 0.03

* 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 Spanish exports go

Of the 353 mapped Spanish players, 126 play outside the La Liga.

  • top-9 Mujaid Sadick · Martín Zubimendi · Nacho Ferri
  • other Jesús Imaz · Iker Pozo · Josema
  • stepping stone Sergio López · Javier Fernández

* 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 2026 FIFA World Cup squad by league tier

Where the 26 players named to the 2026 FIFA World Cup squad played in 2025/26, next to Germany, France, England, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal. 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+
ESP Spain 2181 0.807 3 8 7 8
GER Germany 2208.5 0.788 2 8 4 12
FRA France 2316 0.807 3 7 10 6
ENG England 2199 1.000 2 8 9 7
NED Netherlands 1903 1.000 1 7 11 7
BEL Belgium 2034 0.807 4 8 5 9
POR Portugal 2226 0.807 1 6 11 8

* 8 of the 182 squad players across the 7 countries have no 2025/26 row in the fetched leagues and are counted as unmatched (ESP 1, GER 0, FRA 1, ENG 1, NED 1, BEL 1, POR 3).