The Premier League of Nations — and the “One and Only” pioneers
While contemplating the multi-faceted awfulness of Brexit, I found myself wondering just how many different nationalities had been represented in the Premier League. It sent me down a rabbit hole. For no good reason, I ended up determined to find every single player who had been their country’s one and only representative. We’ll get there shortly, but here’s what I learned along the way:
113 countries
In total, 113 of the world’s 195 countries have been represented in the Premier League.
All of the data in this post is based on minutes played: i.e. if three players play 20 minutes each for country X, and one player plays 65 minutes for country Y, country Y is more represented than country X.
Nationalities are defined by a player’s country of birth, unless they go on to play competitively for a different nation. For example: Wes Morgan, who was born in Nottingham, is considered Jamaican in this data. For more notes on the data — and to access it — see the foot of this post (the raw data all came from the wonderful fbref). If I’ve made any mistakes, let me know and I’ll correct them!
Unsurprisingly, England is the most represented country, followed by Ireland, France, Scotland & Wales. Here’s the full list showing the % of total minutes played by each nationality in the Premier League since its creation in 1992:
Here’s the same chart with the “home nations” (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) removed:
The Continents
Here’s how the Continents break down (excluding Home Nations):
And here’s a breakdown of every Premier League minute played by players representing only European nations (excluding the home nations):
The Americas & The Caribbean:
Next up — all minutes played by players representing Africa:
And finally, Asia & Australasia:
The One & Only
And here’s the bit you’ve all been waiting for [sic]. The following players are the one and only representatives of their country to play in the Premier League. There are 15 in total, with two honourable mentions:
Albania: Lorik Cana. Albania’s most-capped player of all time. Played a season with Sunderland in 2009/10.
Armenia: Henrikh Mkhitaryan. First with Manchester United then Arsenal, currently on loan at Roma.
Angola: Manucho. Remember him? Played once for Manchester United in 2008 before spending the second half of the season on loan at Hull City.
Burkina Faso: Bertrand Traore. Played 10 times for Chelsea in 2015/16 before moving to Ajax and then Lyon where he’s doing rather well.
Central African Republic: Frédéric Nimani. Nope, me neither. Made a couple of sub appearances up front for Burnley on loan from Monaco in 2010.
Cuba: Onel Hernández. Made Cuban history this season when he came off the bench for Norwich during their opening day defeat to Liverpool.
Cape Verde: Pelé. Not that one. Played 4 games at Centre-Back for West Brom in 2008–2009. Last seen playing for Totton in the Southern League Division 1.
Faroe Islands: Gunnar Nielsen. Goalkeeper for Man City from 2009–12, played 18 mins for the 1st team & had loan spells with Wrexham & Tranmere.
Gambia: Modou Barrow. Spent 2 years in the Premier League with Swansea before moving to Leeds then Reading. Currently in Turkey with Denizilspor.
Kenya: Victor Wanyama. Kenya’s one and only rep in the Premier League since 2013, first with Southampton, currently at Spurs.
Oman: Ali Al-Habsi. Captain of the Omani national team, spent three seasons in the Premier League with Wigan from 2010, still playing in Saudi Arabia.
Philippines: Neil Etheridge. Born in Enfield to a Filipina mother, Etheridge played for Cardiff in the PL last season and has 62 caps for the Philippines.
Pakistan: Zesh Rahman. Born in Birmingham but has played 25 times for Pakistan. Played a handful of games for Fulham from 2003–05.
Seychelles: Kevin Betsy. Legend. His 6 minutes for Fulham in 2001 make Seychelles the least represented of all represented nations (0.00003%)
Uganda: Savio Nsereko. Played 10 games for West Ham in 2009 after a £9m move from Brescia. Now in the German 4th tier. Once kidnapped himself.
Honourable mention 1: Ruel Fox should be furious at Brandon Comley for playing 11 minutes for QPR in 2014 otherwise he would’ve been the sole Premier League representative for Montserrat.
Honourable mention 2: Florent Hadergjonaj of Kosovo should be similarly pissed off at Bersant Celina for the 14 mins he played for Man City in 2015.
Pioneers all. We salute you.
NOTES ON THE DATA
- All data from fbref.com, a proper treasure trove, thanks! Here’s where I put all the data and played around with it. It’s a mess, but you’re more than welcome to it.
- All of the data in this post is based on minutes played — for a country to have been represented, the player has to have actually played some minutes in the Premier League. To be clear: it is not based on the number of players from a particular country, rather the amount of Premier League minutes played by players of that nationality.
- Nationalities are defined by a player’s country of birth, unless they go on to represent a different nation, after which it changes to that nation. i.e. Zesh Rahman, who was officially English until he played for Pakistan when he became Pakistani (as far as this data is concerned)
- The data is a snapshot from 27th September 2019.
- The data starts from the formation of the Premier League in 1992. I’m very aware there was English top tier football before this date but it was sort of when I started getting obsessed with football, so there.
- The data only includes nations recognised by Fifa. Sorry Catalonia et al.
- No-longer-existant or geographically-changed nationalities are superseded by their replacements. So someone like Davor Suker, who was born in Croatia when it was part of Yugoslavia (and played for Yugoslavia and then Croatia), is considered Croatian.
- It’s almost certain that I’ve made some errors in the analysis — please let me know if you spot any, thanks!
