Small country, steady supply: Why the Premier League keeps signing Swiss players | OneFootball

Switzerland has about nine million people. It has no coastline. And most English fans couldn’t name five clubs in its league. Even so, when the 2026/27 Premier League season started in August, seven Swiss internationals were on the books of top-flight clubs.

They are all over the map. Granit Xhaka runs the midfield at Sunderland. Fabian Schär is in his ninth season at Newcastle. Dan Ndoye has been giving full-backs a hard time at Nottingham Forest. Leeds have two of them, Noah Okafor and Nico Elvedi. Coventry City brought Aurèle Amenda up with them, and Aston Villa signed Johan Manzambi, one of the breakout stars of the World Cup.

Seven players is a lot for a country of that size. It also didn’t happen overnight. It took about thirty years.

The first ones through the door

It started in the mid-1990s. Marc Hottiger joined Newcastle in 1994 and later moved on to Everton. Ramon Vega became a regular in the Tottenham defence. Neither of them was a big name. But they showed that Swiss players could handle the pace and the physical side of English football.

Then came Stéphane Henchoz. He did well at Blackburn and moved to Liverpool, where he and Sami Hyypiä were hard to get past. In 2001 he won the FA Cup, the League Cup and the UEFA Cup with them. By the time he was done at Blackburn, Liverpool and Wigan, he had played more than 240 Premier League games.

In the 2000s, Arsenal became a kind of finishing school for young Swiss players. Arsène Wenger signed Philippe Senderos and Johan Djourou as teenagers. Both stayed in England for years. Much later, Stephan Lichtsteiner spent a season in north London after a long and successful spell at Juventus.

Xhaka, Manzambi and the rest

If one player changed how people in England see Swiss footballers, it was Granit Xhaka. He joined Arsenal in 2016. Parts of the crowd turned on him, and for a while it got ugly. But he stayed. When he left in 2023, he left as a leader the club respected.

He went to Bayer Leverkusen for two seasons and won the Bundesliga there without losing a game. In 2025 he came back to England with Sunderland. He has now played more than 260 Premier League games. No Swiss player has played more.

He wasn’t the only one. Xherdan Shaqiri was a joy to watch at Stoke, then won the title with Liverpool in 2019/20. Manuel Akanji won the treble with Manchester City in 2022/23. And Fabian Schär has been at Newcastle since 2018. Few players there have been around longer.

The next group looks just as good. Johan Manzambi moved from Freiburg to Villa this summer, less than two months after playing against them in the Europa League final. Dan Ndoye and Noah Okafor came over in 2025. Elvedi and Amenda give two ambitious clubs more depth at the back.

So why Switzerland?

There’s no one secret. But the same few reasons come up again and again.

The first is youth football. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Swiss FA rebuilt the way it trains young players. It paid off. The U17s won the European title in 2002 and the World Cup in 2009. Coaches across the country work to the same plan, and at a young age skill counts for more than size.

The second is diversity. Many of the best Swiss players grew up in immigrant families. Their parents came from Kosovo, Albania, other parts of the Balkans or Africa. Most of these players speak two or three languages. That makes a move abroad a lot less scary.

The third is the league itself. For most players, the Super League is a place to get noticed, not a place to stay. Clubs like Basel, Young Boys and Zürich need to sell players to get by. So young players get first-team games early. Many go to the Bundesliga first, get used to a faster game, and move to England after that. Xhaka, Elvedi and Manzambi all took that route.

Watching from home

In Switzerland, interest in the Premier League goes up with every new signing. Saturday afternoon games start at 4 pm Swiss time, which suits people well. Bars in Zürich, Basel and Geneva fill up when Sunderland or Villa are on. The big English clubs have had fan clubs in Switzerland for years. When a Swiss player is in the team, more people join.

For many fans, a weekend game also means a small bet. This is where Switzerland and the UK are very different. The Premier League only banned betting sponsors from the front of matchday shirts this season. Swiss law has been strict for much longer. Since the Money Gaming Act came into force in 2019, only two operators are allowed to offer online sports betting. Swisslos covers the German- and Italian-speaking parts of the country. Loterie Romande covers the French-speaking west.

Swiss internet providers block foreign sites that don’t have a licence. Lotteries and sports betting are overseen by the intercantonal regulator Gespa. Casinos fall under the federal gaming board ESBK. Both keep public blocklists. If you want to see what’s legal, there are independent comparisons of Swiss betting sites that show which providers have a licence and what they offer.

The pipeline isn’t drying up

Marc Hottiger was a novelty when he arrived on Tyneside. Today, with Manzambi in his first season at Villa Park, nobody is surprised to see a Swiss name on a Premier League team sheet. Swiss players rarely come with the hype of a big Brazilian or French signing. But they settle in fast. They do their job. And they usually stay for a long time.

The next group is already coming through at Basel, Young Boys, and in the Bundesliga. English scouts will keep watching.