Some footballers are ceaselessly dubbed ‘mercenaries’. And save for trigger-happy Faustino Asprilla perhaps, it’s normally on account of their nomadic club-hopping than experience raiding Central American villages with an AK-47.
Inevitably then, with more and more of the planet's best footballers moving from their native lands and into the world’s major leagues, every passing World Cup event brings with it something of a footballing diaspora. And it’s no exception with this one.
Delving into the league backgrounds of players over at the 2014 World Cup, this infographic from The Missing Graph throws up some brilliant findings, like, for instance, 120 of players in this year's tournament earn their wages in England. Amazingly, that’s nearly one in six.
The biggest surprise, however, might be how massively under-represented the Brazilian leagues are, boasting just four men in the tournament despite it being on home soil, surely making it one of the poorest ratios for home-based players for any host nation in World Cup history.
Scan over the rest of the findings, below:
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