All 48 teams participating in the World Cup have already finalized their squads, each consisting of 26 selected players.
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The tournament, taking place in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, will feature 449 footballers who represented 449 different clubs last season.
But while some of them will send only one or two players to the World Cup, others will send a whole bunch of footballers.
The most, as many as 19, will come from the Manchester City team.
Four “Citizens” players will represent England, three – Portugal, two each – the Netherlands and Croatia, and one each – Belgium, Egypt, Spain, France, Norway, Algeria, Uzbekistan, and Ghana.
Manchester City is also the team whose players are most widely spread across national teams – at least one Manchester City player can be found in 12 different national teams.
Bayern Munich is just one player behind. The German champions will have as many as 18 representatives at the World Cup.
Seven Bavarian players will defend Germany’s honor, two will play for France and Senegal each, and one each will represent South Korea, Canada, Japan, Austria, Colombia, Croatia, and England.
Strong contingents will also represent the Paris Saint-Germain and London Arsenal clubs, which played in the UEFA Champions League final last Saturday. They will each send 16 players to the global championships.
Spanish champions Barcelona will send 15 players to the global championships, eight of whom will represent the European champion Spain.
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At least 10 representatives at the global championships will come from 12 other clubs, including not only well-known European football names such as Real Madrid, Liverpool, Atletico Madrid, or Manchester United, but also the modest Czech team Slavia Prague, Turkish football giants Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe, and Saudi Arabia’s flagship Al-Hilal.
However, the abundance of representatives from one team at the World Cup is easy to explain.
All 10 representatives of the Prague team will play in the Czech national team at the global championships. This is the largest delegation of players from one country among all world clubs.
Turkey will be represented by six players each from Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe, while the Saudi Arabian national team will have seven footballers from Al-Hilal.
The opposite phenomenon is seen with AC Milan and Real Madrid. Both will send 10 players to the global championships, but neither will include Italians (in AC Milan’s case) nor Spaniards (in Real’s case). The reasons are different – the Italian national team did not qualify for the World Cup, and for the first time in history, the Spanish national team did not need a single Real member.
- 19 – Manchester City;
- 18 – Bayern;
- 16 – PSG, Arsenal;
- 15 – Barcelona;
- 12 – Manchester United, Crystal Palace, Al-Hilal, Atletico;
- 11 – Liverpool, Borussia, Galatasaray;
- 10 – AC Milan, Real, Fenerbahçe, PSV, Slavia.
The most, as many as 205 players, will come from English clubs to the World Cup. At least one player will be sent to the global championships by 43 different English teams, including Braintree Town, which plays in the sixth tier, whose representative Tommy Smith will defend New Zealand’s honor.
108 players will come from Germany, 86 each from Spain and France, and 71 from Italian clubs.
Clubs from as many as 73 countries will send at least one footballer to the World Cup. Lithuania is not among them.
- 205 – England;
- 108 – Germany;
- 86 – Spain, France;
- 71 – Italy
- 49 – Saudi Arabia;
- 45 – Turkey;
- 42 – USA;
- 38 – Netherlands;
- 32 – Brazil, Portugal;
- 29 – Belgium, Qatar;
- 26 – Mexico;
- 23 – Iran;
- 22 – Czech Republic;
- 20 – Egypt, Scotland;
- 19 – South Africa;
- 17 – Argentina;
- 16 – Uzbekistan;
- 15 – Iraq, United Arab Emirates;
- 14 – Denmark;
- 12 – Greece, Switzerland, Russia;
- 11 – Jordan;
- 10 – Cyprus;
- 8 – South Korea, New Zealand;
- 7 – Austria, Australia, Japan, Croatia, Norway, Tunisia;
- 6 – Canada;
- 5 – Ecuador, Poland;
- 4 – Israel, Sweden;
- 3 – Algeria, Hungary, Malaysia, Morocco, Paraguay;
- 2 – Bulgaria, Chile, Costa Rica, Ireland, Panama, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Venezuela;
- 1 – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Colombia, Finland, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Uruguay.
Interestingly, five countries will play in the World Cup whose clubs will not send a single representative to the global championships. These are Ivory Coast, Senegal, Curaçao, Cape Verde, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The World Cup will begin on June 11 and continue until July 19.
