Where do all the unknown African internationals play?

Tonight I watched co-hosts Gabon win 3-2 home against Morocco in African Cup of Nations. An exciting match with lots of tempo, great chances, crazy and passionate spectators, and a couple of very nice goals. The win was well deserved, but there was tension to the last second, where Bruno Mbanangoyé settled the match with a world class free kick.

Usually, when I watch soccer, I recognize most of the players on the pitch, and know which clubs they play for, but I would be lying if I said that I recognized more than just a couple of players in this match. So I wondered where all the unknown African internationals play? After few minutes browsing, I didn’t find what I was looking for at the official site http://www.cafonline.com, but instead I found a great overview at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Africa_Cup_of_Nations_squads), which list all players in this years African Cup of Nations, together with position, shirt number, age, caps and club. I have made a quick summary statistics for the curious reader.

Do they play in their own national leagues or abroad?


Which continents and countries (top 20) do they play?

*Assuming Russia belongs to Europe.



Notice that above numbers doesn’t say anything about in which league the players play or if they are regular first team players or subs on the reserve team. I would say that approximately 100 of the non-home players belong to clubs in “big” leagues. And what is the definition of “big” league then? Well something like the best league in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Brazil, Russia, Portugal and perhaps Turkey or Greece. The Ivory Coast team has a lot of quality, and a few other teams has some well-known profiles, but only few players in African Cup of Nations belong to top clubs in the big leagues.

Does the match winner Bruno Mbanangoyé play in a big league? Not at all, he plays for Dinamo Minsk in the Belarusian Premier League.

What about the coaches, are they home grown or hired somewhere else? Here is the complete list and a short summary.

Is Denmark the first team with 0 points from the preliminary round, to qualify for the semifinals?

In 2002 the European Championship in handball changed format. Instead of 12 teams, 16 teams where participating, and a second group stage was introduced, the main round.

Since then, 18 teams on the men’s side and 14 teams on the women’s side, have entered the main round with 0 points. A total of 32 teams have entered the main round with 0 points, but only once has a team which entered the main round with 0 points qualified for the semifinals. It happened yesterday, when Denmark defeated Sweden and finished the main round in second place with 6 points.

 

But collecting 6 points in the main round is no guarantee for qualifying to the semifinals, a lot of other results also need to go your way. In 2010 the France women’s team also accomplished to collect 6 points in the main round after entering with 0 points, but they finished 3rd in the group.
 

Then what about entering main round with 1 point? Well here you go:

Not much better as we see, but Germany actually won the tournament in 2004 after entering main round with only 1 point, and in 2006 Germany tried to replicate the accomplishment from two years before, but without luck. The 7 points wasn’t enough to qualify for the semifinals that year. Source http://www.eurohandball.com/.
 

Is Serie A the league for old and tired players?

It has been a while since November 23rd, where Milan played Barcelona in the 5th round of the group stage in the Uefa Champions League. It was a game I was very much looking forward to. Second meeting between the Italian champions and the Spanish champions, which most likely would decide who would finish top in the group.

Due to a late injury, Zlatan Ibrahimovic did not take part in the first match against his old club. Now he was back, and in great goal form. My expectations were high. I expected an entertaining game, where Messi, Xavi and the rest of Barcelona’s dream team would be forced to play up to their best, to hold on to first place in the group.

The game had lots of quality, lots of great chances and great goals, especially the equalizer by Kevin Prince Boatengs in second half. Zlatan also made a name of himself, scoring against his old club in first half, assisted by the living legend Clarence Seedorf. But as usual, Barcelona was the better side, and throughout the game, it seemed like the small Catalan players had an extra gear, compared to the old and perhaps a little bit tired Milan players.

Serie A  has for a while had a reputation for being the league where old players seek, to extend their champions league career with a couple of years before retiring. Zlatan turned 30 in October last year, and he is, in my view, not an exception to this pattern. I remember how quick and challenging he was in his years in Ajax, Juventus and most of the time in Internazionale. He was capable of some of the most spectacular things done on the pitch. He still has a lot of quality, but his lack of pace and quickness on the feet’s has caused experts and reporters to say that the Italian league fits him better.

But is the squad average age (or start XI average age) really higher in top clubs of Italy compared to the top teams of the other big leagues? In the match of 23rd November, Barcelona had 3 players above the age of 31 in the start XI (Puyol (33), Abidal (32), Keita (31)), compared to 5 in the Italian side (Nesta (35), Seedorf (35), Zambrotta (34), Van Bommel (34), Abbiati (34)).

To try to answer the question, I will compare the current top 5 teams in the four big European leagues. Gathering data only for start XI’s is a major task, so that I won’t do, but taking current squads and current ages can be done quite quickly. The summary results are as follows (source http://www.footballsquads.co.uk/).




As we see, average age in the Spanish and Italian top 5 clubs doesn’t differ at all, so that is not evidence to the hypothesis. Instead if we look at players above 31 years (that is, 31 years and older), there seems to be significantly more old players in the Italian top 5. Just take a look at the box plot below.

But the sample sizes are too small to establish significance. If we perform a Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test, we are miles from significance in median differences across countries (p-value of 0.2299). If we instead perform the Wilcoxon Rank Sum test with Italy against the three other countries one by one, we can almost establish significance (p-values of 0.05692, 0.07062 and 0.05748 respectively). If we look at players above 33 years, we can establish significance with pairwise Wilcoxon Rank Sum test, so I would say that there is evidence to call Serie A for the dinosaur league.

Notice in the summary statistics, the large squad sizes in England. According to arsenal.com, the teams are allowed to register up to 25 players for league games, which must include no more than 17 ‘non-homegrown’ players. Beside this registration, clubs can supplement their squad with an unlimited number of players under the age of 21, which Arsene Wenger is making great use of. So squad average age says more about how many young players the manager have registered, and thereby the size of the squad, than it says anything about how many old players are in the squad, and even less about how many players are usually in the starting XI. A more complete analysis will of course make use of the knowledge about which players are actually playing and who are not even on the bench.