Bundesliga doing well retaining elite German talent

There is a narrative going around that the Bundesliga is losing it’s top domestic talent to other leagues who can afford to pay them more. This image has recently been fed by the high profile transfers of Timo Werner and Kai Havertz to English Premier League side Chelsea. But do the hard numbers support this oft expressed concern?

The fine folks at The Athletic crunched some numbers on the Euro 2020 rosters to see which countries were doing well at retaining their brightest talent in their domestic professional league as they rose from U-21 team potential to full national team success. Although the national team roster may be an imperfect tool to measure who are the best players a country has produced, it is a pretty good one. And looking at those numbers is seems that the Bundesliga has been extremely effective at retaining the country’s elite talent among its teams:

Only England and Wales are doing better than Germany on this analysis out of all the countries that qualified for the Euros.

So while there have been some elite German talents who have left the Bundesliga for greener pastures it looks like overall the top players are staying home over the course of their development from young internationals to top ranking stars.