Since the Summer 2024 transfer window, eight players have arrived in the Championship having signed from the Australian A-League.
The 24/25 season also saw a record eight Japanese players in the division, either coming directly from the J-League or having spent less than three years in Europe. South Korean signings have become similarly prevalent in the last few seasons.
The trend of signings from relatively unusual leagues appears to be picking up steam. QPR fans alone may have noticed their side linked with youngsters from Uzbekistan, Sudan, and South Africa in this transfer window.
But why have Championship clubs acquired this taste for players developed in these often-forgotten leagues in recent times?
The Concept of Undervalued Leagues
This phenomenon is not as strange as one may initially think. Brentford became known for its core of Danish players during their hunt for promotion and have continued to make signings of Scandinavian origin players after achieving their Premier League status.
Daniel Farke’s Championship winning Norwich side of 2018/19 saw six members of its squad join from the German second division, including that season’s top goalscorer Teemu Pukki. The Belgian pro League alone has seen upwards of 25 players move to the Championship since 2022, including three of the aforementioned Japanese footballers.
The idea itself is quite simple, in the hunt for finding cheap yet talented players, English clubs look outside its own pyramid, and for EFL sides, this often means looking outside the ‘Top 5’ leagues. If clubs see the league as fairly competitive, they can decide to sign excellent talent for a relatively low price.
However, the leagues that are focused upon change over time.
This is due to the fact that as more clubs fish in the same pond after some successful transitions to ‘better’ leagues, player valuations increase and smaller clubs are forced to look elsewhere.
Furthermore, clubs in a feeder league become richer as a result of previous sales and can therefore demand higher fees as they become less in need of money. The Danish Superliga provides proof of this, with €9 million raised for the league’s highest sale in 2018, compared to €25 million just five years later.
It is no doubt this combination that has seen Championship clubs look further afield in the hopes of signing quality, cheap talent, while also attempting to cut out the middlemen that many Belgian sides have become.
Why Go Australian?
In this endeavour, Championship teams seem to have found their next hunting ground in the A-League.
Australian football has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. According to the FIFA World Rankings, the country has comfortably sat inside the top 30 nations since 2022 despite being just the 57th best just ten years ago.
This meteoric rise has been accompanied by success in the younger age categories, culminating in Australia winning the 2025 U20 Asian Cup for the first time.
The Australian A-League itself has also risen in prominence, achieving Band-5 status under the FA’s GBE system. This allows for Australian players to be signed more easily as part of any Championship side’s four ESC slots, a system that allows clubs to sign players who fall short of the required GBE points.
The fact that many Australian footballers have British ancestry also helps, with it looking likely that new QPR signing Jaylen Pearman will be able to use his English ancestry to skirt around the use of an ESC slot.
This makes the Australian A-League a popular option for many clubs in the EFL Championship.
With many Championship clubs constantly facing PSR issues, the signing of players in emerging football nations for small transfer fees will likely continue and new leagues will continue to be found and scour in hopes of finding value.
Written by Amar Topan (@W12Amar on X)
