World Cup 2014 Expats

Not all World Cup players are playing for the country they were born in. This is especially true for Algeria, who recently beat South Korea with an impressive 4-2, where 16 of squad were born in France.

There are 88 expat players in total who are playing for another country, including several born in non-qualifying nations such as Sweden, Norway, Kosovo and Albania. 26 of those expats originally come from France.

England has one player born abroad, Raheem Shaquille Sterling who was originally born in Jamaica. Maybe if England had more French expats they would have gotten past the group stages…too soon?

This map shows the ins-and-outs of each country across the world, there’s a table underneath with players names, birth countries and current teams too.

The data for the map and table comes via kimono’s World Cup API.