More La Liga players in 2018 World Cup than before

A total of 81 LaLiga players will be fighting for their country at this winter’s World Cup in Russia, with the Spanish league sending more players than ever before to the biggest tournament in international football.

On only two occasions since the tournament expanded in 1998 to feature 32 nations have there been more than 60 LaLiga players at a World Cup. In Brazil 2014 there were 64 and in France 1998 there were 70, the record until now.

Including Numancia and Morocco goalkeeper Munir Mohand Mohamed, who has been competing in the second tier of Spanish football in the 2017/18 campaign, there will be a record 81 players taking part in the tournament in Russia who have called Spain their home for the past year.

Considering 18 fewer LaLiga players went to Brazil four years ago, there has clearly been a significant shift with regards to the league’s pool of international players, not just in terms of the number of players but also in terms of the number of national teams represented. At the 2014 World Cup, 18 of the 32 competing teams arrived with at least one LaLiga player, while this time around there will be 22. LaLiga is welcoming more and more nationalities day by day, with players from 49 different countries having taken part in the 2017/18 LaLiga season.

The league has become truly global and not only will 22 different national teams have a LaLiga player at this summer’s World Cup but every FIFA continent will have one too. In previous tournaments, almost all the LaLiga players belonged to European or South American national teams, but this year there will be also be footballers in African squads such as Morocco and Nigeria, in North and Central American squads like Panama and Costa Rica and in Asian squads including Japan and Saudi Arabia. Even host nation Russia has a LaLiga player, with Villarreal’s Denis Cheryshev making coach Stanislav Cherchesov’s 23-man list.

There will be some truly exotic made-in-LaLiga matchups at stadiums across Russia this summer. So when Sevilla’s Simon Kjaer is given the job of tracking Barcelona’s Ousmane Dembélé in Denmark vs France, you’ll know this is a match-up fans of Spanish football have seen before.

When Real Madrid’s Keylor Navas saves a header from Deportivo La Coruna’s Fabian Schär in Switzerland vs Costa Rica, it’ll seem somewhat familiar. And when Espanyol’s Carlos Sánchez makes a tackle on Eibar’s Takashi Inui in Colombia vs Japan, it’ll be a case of déjà vu.

This summer, more than ever, the World Cup will have a distinctly LaLiga-esque flavour to it. And it’ll be a joy to watch.