From the article:
As World Cup competition intensifies in the coming weeks, European soccer fans are going to see a lot of familiar faces on their national teams—and on everyone else’s. A huge proportion of players on national teams from the U.S. to Australia spend most of their year in Europe. But if past competitions are any indication, the free flow of players across borders will create a more equal and exciting competition in Brazil. And therein lies a lesson for global migration on and off the pitch.
In a study of the increased globalization of soccer, Chrysovalantis Vasilakis of the University of Warwick found that relaxing rules on player migration confers significant benefits to those who move and to those who stay behind. In 1995, the European Court of Justice ruling made it far easier for players from outside the European Union to play for European soccer clubs, and for players already in the EU to move from one club to another. Vasilakis looked at the distribution of talented players, which he defined as those who have played at least three games for one of the 65 top national teams worldwide in a World Cup year. He also calculated how many of those players are employed by top clubs, and he considered the quality of each league, a measure based on the quality of clubs playing in them.
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