Summary · Question 5 of 14
Where German-eligible players with 450+ minutes played in 2025/26, by league tier
288 of 410 played abroad: 49 in the 9 top-ranked leagues and 266 (92 %) in a league no stronger than the Bundesliga 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 266 sideways moves, by league: GER-2. Bundesliga: 197, AUT-Bundesliga: 13, SUI-Super League: 11, TUR-Süper Lig: 10, BEL-Pro League: 7, DEN-Superliga: 7, NED-Eredivisie: 6, POL-Ekstraklasa: 4, CRO-HNL: 3, POR-Primeira Liga: 3, CZE-First League: 2, FRA-Ligue 1: 1, HUN-NB I: 1, NOR-Eliteserien: 1.
How we know
A Bundesliga season converts to 0.78 of a Premier League one by the transfer-graph model (90 % HDI 0.74–0.81), against 0.79 by the UEFA-coefficient multiplier; the destination tiers and the sideways share on this page use the UEFA value.
As an analytics question In numbers: destination-league tier of every German-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 German-eligible player's 2025/26 row with at least 450 minutes, one row per position group; sideways = destination multiplier ≤ German league multiplier, both UEFA-coefficient multipliers (league strength: two estimates, § Methodology). Bundesliga is itself one of Europe's top-9 leagues; here 'abroad' means the other 8.
What this means
Of the 410 rows, 122 are at home and 288 abroad, 49 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