site.btaOnly 50 Bulgarian Footballers Play Abroad

The International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) Football Observatory Weekly Post showed that currently Bulgaria has only 50 footballers playing abroad, placing it 62nd out of 79 countries. Over the last five years, the number of Bulgarians in foreign leagues has decreased by nine, which is a drop of 15%.

Only one Bulgarian is present in the Top 5 football leagues today: Petko Hristov who competes in the Italian Serie A with his team Spezia Calcio. Ilia Gruev's Werder Bremen is also on its way back to the German Bundesliga.

CIES's list is headed by Brazil with 1,219 footballers, followed by France with 978 and Argentina with 815.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (180), Greece (115), Slovenia (113), Montenegro (93), North Macedonia (92) are the other Balkan countries that make the list.

Zambia and Uzbekistan are at the bottom with 25 players each.