Gündoğan, 24th signing from the Premier League!

Five of the last nine players to join FC Barcelona have arrived from the English Premier League

İlkay Gündoğan has become the 24th FC Barcelona signing from a club in the English Premier League (since it was founded in 1992/93). Gheorghe Popescu was the first in 1995, and since then England has always been a prime target for sourcing potential new recruits to the blaugrana cause.

Five of the last nine

The Premiership is widely regarded as the strongest domestic football league in the world, so it's no surprise that a club of Barça's stature should go there looking for new players. Five of the last nine (Gündoğan, Raphinha, Christensen Bellerín and Marcos Alonso) have all come directly from English clubs, and there have been nine acquisitions from the EPL in just the two last seasons. 

Arsenal tops list

Of the 24 players in total that have come to Barça from the Premier League, no fewer than ten came from Arsenal:

Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit (2000)

Giovanni van Bronckhorst (2003)

Thierry Henry (2007)

Aleksandr Hleb (2008)

Cesc Fàbregas (2011)

Alex Song (2012)

Thomas Vermaelen (2014)

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Héctor Bellerín (2022). 

Manchester City is now second on the list with four, all in recent years:

Sergio Agüero, Eric Garcia and Ferran Torres (2021)

İlkay Gündoğan (2023). 

Raphinha, only one not to come from 'big six'