By Stelios Toromanidis/ info@eurohoops.net
Globalization has now penetrated many areas of everyday life, with an impact on sports and, in particular, basketball. Even though we are talking about the top club competition in Europe, 31.5% of the players who participate in it come from countries outside of the Old Continent, precisely from the USA, Oceania and Africa.
This means that 74 of the competition’s 235 players are not European. Of those, 71 come from the USA, two from Australia and one from Africa.
In terms of the countries of origin of the players of the competition, they are 34 in number, 26 of them are in Europe (76.5%), while the table also includes six from the Americas, one from Oceania and one from Africa.
Eurohoops searched and found all of them, then singled out countries with a double-digit number of EuroLeague representatives. Which of them has the most basketball players, and by what amount?
Before we present them to you, here is the table that contains the other 27 countries that have from one to nine representatives in the EuroLeague.
Notes:
- We should note that the naturalized players that teams have, those who also have a passport from another country as well, apart from their own, will be considered representatives of their main country (for example, Matt Lojeski, who plays in the national team of Belgium as a naturalized player but comes from the USA, we classify with the Americans).
- On the contrary, players like Nick Calathes or Daniel Hackett, who don’t compete as naturalized players in the national teams of their countries even though they have roots or a connection with another country, we will classify them as Greek and Italian respectively.
In detail, here are the countries that have a single-digit number of players in the EuroLeague, in places 8 to 34:
|
Place |
Country |
Teams in the EuroLeague |
Players in the EuroLeague |
| 8 | Turkey | 2 | 9 |
| – | Italy | 1 | 9 |
| 10 | Germany | 1 | 8 |
| 11 | Israel | 1 | 5 |
| – | Latvia | – | 5 |
| 13 | Argentina | – | 4 |
| – | Slovenia | – | 4 |
| – | Montenegro | – | 4 |
| 16 | Georgia | – | 3 |
| – | Croatia | – | 3 |
| 18 | Brazil | – | 2 |
| – | Australia | – | 2 |
| – | Finland | – | 2 |
| 21 | Sweden | – | 1 |
| – | Czech Republic | – | 1 |
| – | Holland | – | 1 |
| – | UK | – | 1 |
| – | Bosnia | – | 1 |
| – | Poland | – | 1 |
| – | Czech Republic | – | 1 |
| – | Canada | – | 1 |
| – | FYROM | – | 1 |
| – | Mexico | – | 1 |
| – | Bulgaria | – | 1 |
| – | Uruguay | – | 1 |
| – | Hungary | – | 1 |
| – | Congo | – | 1 |
7. Lithuania: 12 players in the EuroLeague
The countdown of our list starts with Lithuania. They are definitely a pure basketball country with a long tradition in the sport and have produced scores of talents.
Aside from Zalgiris Kaunas’s eight native players, there are four more players who compete in three EuroLeague teams outside of Lithuania. From the veteran of the competition, Paulius Jankunas, to the rookie, Gytis Masiulis, the DNA of the orange ball is in the blood of the representatives of this Baltic country.
| Position | Club | Number of Lithuanian players |
| 1 | Zalgiris Kaunas | 8 |
| 2 | Armani EX Olimpia Milano | 2 |
| 3 | Panathinaikos Superfoods | 1 |
| 4 | Real Madrid | 1 |
| Sum | 4 clubs | 12 players (5.1%) |
6. France: 13 players in the EuroLeague
Even though France is not represented by any team in the EuroLeague, the talent of their players is so big that a lot of squads in the top club competition on the Old Continent are betting on them.
Nine of the 16 teams in the competition have from one to three French players on their rosters, and as a result, the ‘Tricolores’ are in sixth place on our list. The most… famous of them is CSKA Moscow’s superstar, Nando De Colo, while Kevin Seraphin and Thomas Heurtel (FC Barcelona Lassa), Fabien Causeur (Real Madrid), and Kim Tillie (Olympiacos Piraeus), who is currently injured, are some of the players that are well worth watching in this season’s EuroLeague.
| Position | Club | Number of French players |
| 1 | FC Barcelona Lassa | 3 |
| 2 | CSKA Moscow | 2 |
| 3 | Baskonia Vitoria Gasteiz | 2 |
| 4 | Olympiacos Piraeus | 1 |
| 5 | Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade | 1 |
| 6 | Real Madrid | 1 |
| 7 | Valencia | 1 |
| 8 | Zalgiris Kaunas | 1 |
| 9 | Armani EX Olimpia Milano | 1 |
| Sum | 9 clubs | 13 players (5,5%) |