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Data collectionThe data in this case study were collected from France, England, Norway,Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. TheFIFA world ranking of national teams at the end of the calendar year indicateshow successful national teams have been. In this system, teams areranked on the basis of their results against other FIFA-member teams, andpoints are awarded based on the results of FIFA-recognised internationalmatches. Originally, the rankings were based on a team’s performance inthe previous eight years. Since 2006, the period has been reduced to fouryears, with more recent results and more significant matches being moreheavily weighted to better reflect the current competitive state of a team(see www.FIFA.com).Due to changes in methodology, we have only used the teams’ rankings, nottheir points, as a measurement of performance. Note also that the lowerranking number a team has, the better its per formance has been.We have registered the clubs which internationals have played for sinceJanuary 1993 (and from May 1994 for the Czech Republic). Furthermore, wehave only included matches in the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Championship(including qualifying matches) when registering players and their clubs.The data relating to which clubs the internationals played for was almostcomplete for the period 1993 to 2007. Unfortunately, we were not this successfulin attempting to gather data on the number of foreigners in the domesticleagues for the entire period. The exception was for England, whererecords go back to 1993 for both variables, and Italy, where the informationon foreign players goes back to 1994. For the other nations (except Spainand the Czech Republic), the data on foreign players in domestic leaguesonly go back to the first years of 2000. For Spain, there is no data on whichclubs the internationals played for, while for the Czech Republic, there is nodata on foreigners in the domestic league.FIGURE 1 France FIFA rank, percentage of foreigners in thedomestic league, internationals playing for domestic teamsTABLE 2 Percentage of foreign players in some leading clubsThe export of outputsOver the years, this international trade has also involved output – includingtelevision programmes, merchandising and sports tourism. At the beginningof the 21st century, the most popular European leagues were broadcast ontelevision worldwide. The commercial value of this export has grown considerably,with the English, Spanish and Italian leagues being the most valuableassets.The EPL recruited 69% of its foreign players from Europe (mainly WesternEurope), but earned only 24% of its overseas TV rights from this market.Asia was the most important output market, accounting for 55% of its totaloverseas TV rights, but only a small proportion of foreign players wererecruited here. Similar discrepancies characterise the Spanish and Italianleagues. The majority of the foreigners in these two leagues came fromLatin America; the rest of Europe was their most important internationalTV market.The Italians and the Dutch were only moderately interested in overseasleagues and particularly in the Italians. This was different in Scandinavia,Australia, Korea and China, where overseas leagues attracted considerableattention. According to an internet survey, 83% of Chinese football fanspreferred watching matches from the EPL to those from the China SuperLeague (CSL) (China Daily, 2005). This pattern was also reflected in commercialvalues. In China the EPL TV rights exceeded those of the CSL bymore than 500% (ibid.). By 2004, the EPL was also the most watched sportin Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore (Webb, 2004). In Scandinavia, the aggregateEPL rights were four times more expensive than in Italy – despite thefact that the Italian population was 240% of the Scandinavian population.On the other hand, the Italians paid more than 10 times for their own SerieA than the Scandinavians collectively paid for their domestic leagues (TVSports Markets, 2007).TABLE 6A Correlations – FranceResultsFrance (see Table 6A; Figure 1)France won the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 and finished runners-up inthe 2006 World Cup. These successes were reflected in the FIFA ranking:France was rated first from May 2001 to June 2002. From August 1998 toMay 2005 it was never lower than fourth. In the first years of the 1990s, themajority of the French internationals played for French clubs. Since then,the pattern has changed and the majority have moved abroad, mainly toclubs in England, Spain and Italy. The correlation coefficient indicates thatthe national team has performed better the more players it has recruitedfrom foreign teams. The direct effect (FIFA ranking the same year as theregistrations of the player distribution) is significant at the 0.01% level,while the lag effect (year t+1) is significant at the 0.05% level.FIGURE 2 England FIFA rank, percentage of foreigners in thedomestic league, internationals playing for domestic teamsTABLE 6B Correlations – EnglandEngland (see Table 6B; Figure 2)England’s all-time low on the FIFA ranking was in 1996, when it was number27. The all-time highs were in February and December 1997, and in September2006, as number four. Table 6B indicates a positive correlation betweenthe percentage of foreigners in the EPL and the FIFA ranking of the Englishnational team. The same applies to the FIFA ranking the year after theregistrationsof the foreign players. The overwhelming majority of English internationalshave played in the EPL, and the few exceptions have played forclubs in Spain, Germany and Italy.FOTBALLtreneren - nr. 5 - 2009 35