Once upon a time, British footballers that decided to leave their home shores for a move overseas were treated like rare, exotic birds. When Kevin Keegan joined Hamburg in 1977, the local press labelled him ‘the messiah’. He helped his new club to the German Bundesliga title in 1979, as well as a European Cup final a year later – that ended in a heart-breaking defeat to Nottingham Forest.
Paul Gascoigne was treated as an even more avant garde curioso at Lazio; aided by his performances at the 1990 World Cup in Italy and, of course, his reputation as something of a comedic hell-raiser. Gazza would help Lazio to qualify for European football for the first time in more than two decades.
Glenn Hoddle, Chris Waddle and Gary Lineker were amongst the other early trailblazers, leaving British football behind for a stint on the continent. Of course, when the old First Division was rebranded as the Premier League in 1992, the influx of cold, hard cash meant that fewer players considered making the same leap – they were very much comfortable with the notion of staying in English football.
But now, the times they are a-changing. In decades gone by, you could barely name a starting eleven of top-level British players plying their trade abroad – by the 2025/26 season, you’d have a cracking team at your disposal: Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Ivan Toney, Conor Gallagher, Fikayo Tomori and Scott McTominay just some of those heading to pastures new abroad. Why? The answer is perhaps more complex than you might imagine…
The Right Move
What would motivate you to move to a new job? Better pay? More agreeable working conditions? Ambition to further your career? In that sense, footballers are no different to any other white or blue collar employee.
Harry Kane
The lure of winning trophies is strong in any player, so perhaps that explains why Harry Kane left Tottenham to join Bayern Munich in 2023. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the fact that the German giants literally doubled his pay – from $231,000 per week in his final season at Spurs to $480,000 in his first campaign at Bayern. Better conditions and more pay? That would have been difficult for Kane to turn down.
Jude Bellingham
The same would have been true for Jude Bellingham, whose decision to first leave Birmingham City for Borussia Dortmund – where he would expand his footballing IQ by playing at a higher level in a more technical league – was followed by a switch from Germany to one of world football’s powerhouses, Real Madrid. Bellingham himself described the switch to Madrid as a ‘no brainer’. He recalled:
I had conversations with other teams but when Madrid came in it was a no-brainer really. The size of the club, the project, the plan going forward, the chance to play with such amazing players. I just jumped at it.
Those other clubs were thought to have included Manchester City and Liverpool, so it’s interesting that the midfield maestro chose the Spanish La Liga over a return to his homeland. Bellingham has hinted that he intends to see out the rest of his career in Madrid, while Kane has cooled on the idea of a return to the Premier League in the remainder of his playing days. For those two individuals in particular, it’s not hard to see why they swapped life in England for more continental soil.
Reinventing the Wheel
Another consideration is the labels with which players can be stuck with while playing in the Premier League.
Scott McTominay
Scott McTominay became something of a meme at Manchester United; a scapegoat for a club ran haplessly from top to bottom. You sense that his switch to Napoli was as much to leave England behind as it was a chance to further his footballing education.
And yet, fast forward two years, and McTominay has gone from being in and out of United’s team to becoming a key figure in Napoli’s midfield – even ranking 18th in the Ballon d’Or voting in a season in which the Naples outfit landed the Serie A title. “I love this place. I love the fans. I love my teammates,” said McTominay of life at Napoli. You don’t get the sense that he regrets his decision to leave English football behind…
Conor Gallagher
Conor Gallagher’s move to Atletico Madrid has a similar feel to it. It’s reported that he rejected a switch to Aston Villa in favour of his Spanish sojourn, with claims that he felt somewhat ‘typecast’ as a hard-working midfielder with little technical ability… an accusation that had led Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca to move him on in the first place.
Jarrell Quansah
That said, perhaps Atletico Madrid – led by Diego Simeone’s dogmatic approach – isn’t the best place to show off your balletic poise. England’s squad for their autumn internationals in 2025 contained a handful of other expats, such as Jarrell Quansah and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Quansah swapped the substitutes bench at Liverpool for first-team action at Bayer Leverkusen, becoming a regular feature in a side that also plays in the Champions League week in, week out. The ambitious central defender wasn’t interested in warming the bench… or playing for a mid-table team in the Premier League. Instead, he wanted his talents to be nurtured and developed.
I just wanted game time and when you are at a team like Liverpool, it’s not promised because there are world-class players all over the pitch. I wanted somewhere where they can trust that I might make mistakes at times, but they will look under that and see I can keep pushing and pushing.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek
Loftus-Cheek is another curiosity. Prodigiously talented, he made the breakthrough at Chelsea but was unable to hold down a regular place in the starting eleven – his versatility, bizarrely, counting against him. He made the switch to AC Milan in 2023 and hasn’t looked back, regularly featuring in Serie A and Champions League action – ‘reborn’, that was how one journalist has described Loftus-Cheek in Italy.
So whether it’s more money, more trophies or a chance to reinvent themselves, you can see why more and more British players are leaving the domestic game behind and taking their chances on the continent.
