Squad churn: how much are things changing in the big European leagues?

Tracking the minutes lost by every team in La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga.

As people seemed to enjoy the squad retention graphics for English clubs, I’ve created versions for some of Europe’s top leagues.

Each team is summarised by a donut chart in which each segment represents a individual player’s minutes from last season, with the size proportional to how much they played. The faded-out segments indicate who has since left the club and the number in the middle is the percentage of last season’s minutes racked up by those who are still there.

La Liga

Starting with the Spanish top flight, Athletic Club have so far retained the services of all of their 17 most-used players from last season. They are also the only team apart from Osasuna who currently have more than 90% of their 2023-24 league minutes still in their squad.

The traditional “big two” of Real Madrid and Barcelona have each lost just one of their 10 most-utilised players: the retired Toni Kroos and loanee João Cancelo respectively.

The starting line-ups of Alavés and Betis will look a lot different this season, as both have lost five of their most-used XI (although only one of their top five apiece).

Sevilla meanwhile have lost three of their four most-deployed players: one was sold (Youssef En-Nesyri), one released (Sergio Ramos) and one returned to their parent club (Boubakary Soumaré).

Serie A

Moving over to Italy we find a promoted team who are very much sticking with the players who got them up. Parma won Serie B last season and have only disposed with 3% of their league playing minutes so far.

Along with defending champions Inter they have held onto all of their 18 most-used players in the window to date. Fellow promoted sides Venezia and Como are also among the least-changed squads so far.

At the other extreme we have Empoli, who narrowly avoided relegation last season and have since lost all of their four most-used players (two sales and two returning loanees) and over 60% of their minutes overall.

Verona have also seen a lot of churn so far, but the core of their squad has remained intact. While almost half of their 2023-24 minutes have gone, they’ve only lost one of their 10 most-utilised players.

Bundesliga

German champions Leverkusen have managed to keep their title-winning squad together so far, with loanee Josip Stanisic their only notable departure. His parent club Bayern have been recruiting but haven’t disposed of any first-team players in the wake of their disappointing 2023-24 campaign.

The same can’t be said of last season’s surprise package Stuttgart, who along with Bochum have already lost four of their 10 most-used players in the summer window. Bayern and Dortmund have nabbed a centre-back each (Hiroki Ito and Waldemar Anton respectively), while two forwards have likewise departed. Serhou Guirassy has also gone to Dortmund while loanee Deniz Undav has returned to Brighton.

Ligue 1

In France we have another promoted team that looks to be keeping the faith with the players who took them up: Auxerre. Only Lens - who have held onto all of their 17 most-used players - have a higher share of last season’s minutes still in their squad.

At the other end of the spectrum, Marseille and Nantes will be lining up quite differently after each losing three of their eight most-utilised players.

While Strasbourg and Rennes have already lost a decent chunk of last season’s minutes, these were mostly accumulated by fringe players rather than their regular starters.

Next steps

Once the transfer window closes I’ll create definitive versions of all these charts, plus some more for other leagues if I get time. In the meantime I’ll use Notes to flag any interesting stuff that happens.