I got curious about all the club teammates facing one another at the World Cup, So I looked up which Clubs had the most players on the rosters of the 32 nations participating. Here are the statistics:
Note 4 teams from Premier League with 51 players
3 teams from La Liga Santander wtih 36 players
1 team each from the top leagues in Germany (11), Italy (11) and France (12). Remember, these are not ALL the players from those league, but that is a total of 121 players from just those ten clubs.
If we look at total players from those top 5 leagues, the Premier League dominates with 108, followed by La Liga in Spain with 78, the Bundesliga with 62, Seria A in Italy with 58 and Ligue Un in France with 47.
Following that are domestic leagues which tend to dominate their national squads - the Russian League had 36, of which I believe 22 were on the Russian Squad. The Saudi league had 30 of whom at least 20 were on the Saudi squad. The Turkish Superlig had 22 and Turkey was not in the Cup. The English 2nd league,the Championship, had 21.
All four of the semi-finalists are dominated by players from those 5 leagues. Of the other 4 in the quarterfinals, only Russia is not so dominated. Even Sweden has players who currently or at least previously played in those leagues.
Of course not all of those 121 players play regularly. Consider for example John Stones, the centerback for England, who was not starting regularly for his premier league team Manchester City, especially when Belgian Vincent Company was healthy, nor did Columbian Goalkeeper David Ospina start regularly for Arsenal, playing behind Peter Cech. But they practiced with those teams, and when they did play, they were surrounded by a quality of teammates that players from other countries might not have experienced.
The US Mens National Team does have those who play regularly in the top five leagues. Among those who have done so recently are Christian Pulisic at Dortmund, Bobby Wood at Hamburg, DeAndre Yedlin at Newcastle, and John Brooks who started for Hertha Berlin and is now at Wolfburgs. There are others on rosters of top European Leagues.
But having a roster dominated by players from MLS with a few more from Mexico illustrated something of the lack of quality of the USMNT. 19 MLS players were on the rosters of the 32 teams. Of these, only 4 were on teams that made the round of 16, 3 for Mexico (the Dos Santos brothers and Carlos Vela) and one for Sweden (Svensson), and of those 4 only Carlos Vela played regularly.
Until the USMNT gets more player regularly playing in the Top Five leagues, we might well qualify, and might even get to round of 16, but being quarterfinalists like we were in 2002 is highly unlikely. Our domestic league simply does not provide enough quality, as anyone who watches it and European soccer can tell.
By the way — before the cup started my choices for teams for the semis came from among Belgium, France, Spain, Croatia (because of Modric and Rakitic in the midfield), Brazil, England, and Uruguay. I did not include either Germany because of the lack of team speed and the lack of a real creative creator, nor did I include Argentina because of their trouble qualifying and their inability to figure out how to put together the talent they had. Similarly, although Portugal was highly ranked and coming off winning the Euros, I did not see any consistent offense besides Ronaldo, and the Swiss were simply too predictable for me.
When the knockout stages started, I predicted a semi final of France v Belgium, and England v Spain, with the final being Belgium beating Spain. So far, other than the Russia upset of Spain, that has gone as expected. I might have been nervous about Uruguay v France had Cavani been available, although I still think the overall speed and quality of France would have prevailed.
Anyhow, it has been a fun World Cup