Where World Cup players earn their living

Right side = each national team (grouped & coloured by confederation). Left side = the region of the club each player played for. Ribbons connect a team to where its players are based — hover anything for detail.
of players were at
European (UEFA) clubs
national
teams
players
The six regions
Club region = the confederation of the club a player was contracted to at the tournament. Australia counted as AFC, New Zealand as OFC. Sources: FIFA / Wikipedia squad lists (1982–2022) and 2026 final squads.
How I built this

The data is every player named to a men's World Cup final squad from 1982 to 2026 — about 8,600 players across twelve tournaments — compiled from FIFA and Wikipedia squad lists. Each player is tagged with the club he was at during that tournament, and each club is mapped to the confederation of its national football association (UEFA, CONMEBOL, CONCACAF, CAF, AFC, OFC).

The picture is a bipartite chord diagram drawn with D3: national teams on the right (grouped and coloured by their own region), club regions on the left, and one ribbon per team–to–region flow, sized by number of players. The world-map key uses Natural Earth boundaries (via world-atlas). It all runs client-side in a single static HTML file.

Built by Marc Parrish. The underlying player-by-player CSV is available on request.