5 clubs renowned for fielding foreign players

Clubs using foreign talent rather than domestic players has been a hot topic in football for years now, whether those clubs hail from England’s Premier League, Italy’s Serie A or Germany’s Bundesliga.

Whether foreign players hinder the development of younger talent, or whether they actually compliment them and allow a league to get stronger remains a point for debate, but either way, the use of foreign talent in football is one genie that won’t ever be going back into the bottle.

Some clubs are far more renowned than others for using foreign talent, though – some have even been known to field an all-foreign XI. Here are five teams who absolutely love to use non-domestic players.

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#1 Chelsea

Chelsea's image began to change dramatically when Ruud Gullit took over as the boss in the mid-1990's

Even before Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought out Chelsea back in 2004, the London side had become renowned for fielding plenty of foreign talent.

Back in the early 90’s, their side was filled largely with domestic talent like Frank Sinclair and Dennis Wise, but that all changed when Dutch superstar Ruud Gullit was brought in at the start of the 1994/95 season.

Just two seasons later, Gullit was appointed as Chelsea’s new player/manager, and suddenly the club had a far more cosmopolitan feel – international stars like Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Di Matteo and Dan Petrescu began to fill the ranks rather than British players.

By 1998/99, foreign talent was more common in Chelsea’s squad than domestic talent, and in November 1999 manager Gianluca Vialli became the first Premier League boss to field an all-foreign starting XI, with the likes of Franck Leboeuf, Gus Poyet and Tore Andre Flo featuring.

Almost a decade on, things haven’t really changed. Despite sporting arguably the best academy in world football, young British talent still struggle to make a mark at Chelsea due to the amount of foreign talent the Blues prefer to bring in.

In October 2017, for instance, it was reported that foreign players had played in 90.4% of minutes for Chelsea – the highest total of any team in Europe’s ‘big four’ leagues at that point in the 2017/18 season.

#2 Inter Milan

Inter Milan have traditionally fielded a lot of foreign talent - including the likes of Ronaldo

More than any other club in Italy, Inter Milan – AKA Internazionale – are renowned for fielding foreign players. Their very existence, in fact, is down to this – founded back in 1908, Inter Milan were formed after members broke away from the club that would eventually become AC Milan due to a wish to accept foreign members as well as native Italians.

Throughout the years Inter always had a strong foreign element to their successful sides – from Luis Suarez and Jair Da Costa of Spain and Brazil respectively in the 1960’s, through to Germany’s Andreas Brehme and Lothar Matthaus in the 1980’s.

When Massimo Moratti bought the club in the 1990’s, even more foreign talent began to flood in, usually for huge transfer fees – the likes of Ronaldo, Alvaro Recoba and Laurent Blanc joined the club to varying degrees of success.

By 2007/08, Inter became the first Italian side to field a side without a single Italian player, instead featuring four Brazilians, three Argentines, a Colombian, a Swede, a Romanian and a Serb. A decade later, not a lot has changed – just 11 of Inter’s 25-man squad for the 2017/18 season were Italian.

#3 Arsenal

Wenger's reign at Arsenal saw him buy plenty of foreign talent, including current star Aubamenayng

Like their London rivals Chelsea, rewind back to the early 1990’s and Arsenal were renowned for having a very British spine of players – from their formidable defence that featured the likes of Tony Adams and Steve Bould, through to an attack spearheaded by the legendary Ian Wright.

That all changed with the arrival of French manager Arsene Wenger – the club’s first non-British boss - in 1996.

Not only did Wenger change the face of the club with regards to training methods, nutrition and fitness, but he also began to bring a steady flow of foreign talent to Highbury and eventually the Emirates.

Initially, he brought in fellow Frenchmen like Patrick Vieira, Nicolas Anelka and Emmanuel Petit, but within a handful of seasons, Arsenal was a destination for players from countries as diverse as Sweden (Fredrik Ljungberg), Nigeria (Nwankwo Kanu) Ukraine (Oleg Luzhny) and Togo (Emmanuel Adebayor).

February 2005 was a watershed moment in particular – Arsenal became the first English club to field not only an all-foreign XI (which Chelsea had done years previously) but an all-foreign squad, with even the substitutes coming from overseas.

Today, Arsenal’s biggest names – Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette and Mesut Ozil – all hail from abroad, and in October 2017 it was revealed that foreign players had played in 84.1% of Arsenal’s Premier League minutes at that point in the season – the second-highest in the Premier League.

#4 Napoli

Napoli's squad contains foreign stars like Marek Hamsik

In October 2017’s report on foreign talent in Europe’s various leagues, in terms of clubs from Europe’s ‘big four’ leagues – England, Spain, Italy and Germany – Chelsea stood head and shoulders above the rest when it came to minutes played by foreign talent.

Another Premier League side – Arsenal – were second, and third? Napoli of Italy’s Serie A, who had used foreign players in 82.1% of their minutes to that point in 2017/18.

When you look at their squad, it’s hardly a surprise – their 25-man line-up for 2017/18 contained just five Italian players, with other nationalities in there including Slovakia (Marek Hamsik), Algeria (Faouzi Ghoulam), Poland (Arkadiusz Milik) and Guinea (Amadou Diawara).

Of course, the club have always made use of foreign talent – their first ever Serie A title was won in the 1986/97 season largely thanks to the influence of Argentina’s Diego Maradona, and in the 90’s the likes of Uruguay’s Daniel Fonseca and Colombia’s Freddy Rincon regularly starred for the side.

Earlier in the season, Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri insisted in an interview that the amount of foreign talent in Serie A wasn’t to blame for Italy’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup – a suggestion that has been aimed at English sides heavily using foreigners over the years, too.

#5 Manchester City

Even back in the mid-1990's, Man City was fielding foreign talent like Georgi Kinkladze

Since the 2008 buyout by the Abu Dhabi Group, it’s hardly a surprise that Manchester City has become a preferred destination for some of the world’s best players.

Since the buyout the likes of Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero, David Silva and now Gabriel Jesus and Bernardo Silva have arrived at the Etihad, making the club truly cosmopolitan.

Prior to the buyout though, City were no strangers to using foreign talent – although a lot of the time, the players they signed were far more obscure than today’s household names.

1995/96, for instance, saw them feature three Germans (Michael Frontzeck, Eike Immel and Uwe Rosler) as well as two Georgians (Georgi Kinkladze and Mikhail Kavelashvili), and even in the club’s darkest days – the 1998/99 season that saw them languishing in the second division – they fielded two Georgians, an Australian, a Dutchman and a Bermudian.

The season prior to the buyout saw their most often-used XI featuring six British players, but by October 2017 – a decade later – 78.4% of their minutes to that point in 2017/18 were taken up by foreign talent. That statistic is perhaps why one of their finest homegrown talents – Jadon Sancho – has now moved to Borussia Dortmund in Germany to look for first-team football.