Football’s own globalisation debate: Do teams with a host of global talents only fare well?

The English Premier League has long been famous for its storied clubs. It is also well-known for the number of imported talents that it uses. And among all English clubs, Manchester City, which won the league on Sunday night, has the maximum number of non-English players on its starting line-up of stars. On Sunday, for example, the only English player who started the game was Joe Hart, the goalkeeper.

The rest were from nations as varied as Argentina, Ivory Coast and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In terms of globalisation, City could be the most advanced club in Europe. The only other club that can claim to be as diverse could probably be Spanish powerhouse Real Madrid.

Its rival Barcelona also employs imported stars — Argentinian Lionel Messi being the most famous — but it plays plenty of local talent as well, groomed at its famous academy.

The New York Times has done an interesting analysis that shows the importance of imported players for City. It asks what would happen to the league standings if all goals scored by non-English players were to be disallowed.

It finds that instead of winning the league, City would have been relegated. Yet, that doesn’t mean that globalised teams do better. Barcelona and Bayern Munich rely heavily on local talent and are great at playing bewitching football, and winning games.