Michael Moritz wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) earlier this week drawing a parallel between open immigration in the English Premier League and how it could be beneficial to the American tech start-up scene.  What Moritz failed to point out (but other readers noticed) is that the EPL isn’t completely open.  Non-EU players require work permits and driven by concerns that foreign players are hurting the development of English players (and subsequently affecting the success of the national team), rules about “home grown” players were put into place this season.

I decided to take a look at the nationalities of players for the top four teams in the EPL.  The width of the edges is the number of games played by someone of that nationality for that club. Manchester City relies most heavily on English players and Arsenal the least.  Arsenal, instead, plays the highest number of French players.  Chelsea has the highest number of African players.

Clearly, England is contributing the most players, but they only account for 23.88% of games played. Non-British European players account for almost 50% of games played, with the remaining 25% split mostly between African and South American players.