The Bundesliga is the best route into the Premier League. Of 531 senior summer signings made by Premier League clubs from 2022 to 2025, the 50 who arrived from the Bundesliga scored 6.0 out of 10 on our Signing Impact measure and 60% became regulars in their first season. Signings from the Championship scored 3.9 (31% regulars), and players from outside our 20 leagues just 3.0 (20%).
Every summer, clubs pay for the same promise: this player will step in and play. Using the Scout52 signing report cards, we followed every senior summer signing across 20 leagues for four summers and asked a simple question. Does where a player comes from tell you how his first season will go? It does, and the pattern holds well beyond England.
Into the Premier League, by origin league
| Signed from | Signings | Impact | Regulars | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bundesliga | 50 | 6.0 | 60% | 6.2 |
| Ligue 1 | 49 | 5.2 | 49% | 5.7 |
| Eredivisie | 28 | 5.2 | 43% | 5.5 |
| Within the Premier League | 153 | 5.1 | 42% | 5.5 |
| LaLiga | 41 | 4.9 | 51% | 6.0 |
| Primeira Liga | 14 | 4.8 | 50% | 5.5 |
| Serie A | 46 | 4.8 | 35% | 5.2 |
| Championship | 55 | 3.9 | 31% | 4.9 |
| Outside our 20 leagues | 66 | 3.0 | 20% | 5.2 |
Senior summer signings into the Premier League, 2022 to 2025, first season at the new club. Darker blue = higher Impact; red = the two weakest routes. Score is the average Scout52 Score of the signings who played enough to be rated (600+ league minutes). Routes with fewer than 12 signings are left out.
The Bundesliga stands out. Its 50 signings averaged 6.0, a full point clear of every other route, and 60% of them were regulars in their first season against 39% for Premier League signings as a whole. Josko Gvardiol, Erling Haaland and Dominik Szoboszlai sit at the top of that list, but so do Anton Stach at Leeds and Granit Xhaka at Sunderland. One likely reason: few leagues come closer to the Premier League's tempo and number of transitions.
Ligue 1 and the Eredivisie come next, both on 5.2, with signings from elsewhere in the Premier League just behind on 5.1. Moves inside the league are the biggest group by far (153 of 531), and they come with the lowest risk of the unknown.
LaLiga and Serie A are different stories. LaLiga arrivals become regulars at a decent rate (51%) and score well once they play (an average Score of 6.0). Serie A signings are the opposite: only 35% became regulars, the lowest of any top-five league.
The two weakest routes are the Championship and anywhere outside our 20 leagues, which here mostly means Belgium, Brazil, Switzerland and Scotland. Only 31% of Championship signings became Premier League regulars, and only 36% of the players from outside our leagues even played the 600 minutes needed for a Scout52 Score.
Second tier to top flight is the hardest step
The Championship result is not an English quirk. In all five of Europe's big leagues, signing a player from the domestic second tier is one of the worst routes into the top flight.
| Route | Signings | Impact | League average | Regulars | Rank among routes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Championship → Premier League | 55 | 3.9 | 4.6 | 31% | 8 of 9 |
| 2. Bundesliga → Bundesliga | 70 | 4.0 | 5.0 | 31% | 9 of 10 |
| Serie B → Serie A | 57 | 3.3 | 4.5 | 28% | 9 of 10 |
| Segunda → LaLiga | 72 | 4.0 | 4.8 | 24% | 7 of 10 |
| Ligue 2 → Ligue 1 | 60 | 4.0 | 4.9 | 30% | 12 of 12 |
League average = every senior signing into that top flight. Rank = where the second-tier route sits among all routes into that league with 12 or more signings (1 = best).
Ligue 2 into Ligue 1 is the weakest of all twelve routes into France. Serie B into Serie A and 2. Bundesliga into the Bundesliga both rank ninth of ten. Fewer than a third of these players become regulars in any of the five countries.
One distinction matters. These are players a top-flight club bought from the league below, usually after a standout season. Players who go up with their own club are not in these numbers. A big season in the second tier is real evidence, but the gap in level is larger than the price tags tend to assume.
Premier League players thrive abroad
Run the route the other way and the picture flips. Senior players leaving the Premier League are among the best signings any club in our 20 leagues makes.
| Signed into | Signings | Impact | Regulars | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bundesliga | 27 | 7.0 | 74% | 6.8 |
| LaLiga | 36 | 6.4 | 75% | 6.1 |
| Ligue 1 | 28 | 6.4 | 68% | 6.2 |
| Süper Lig | 29 | 6.4 | 62% | 6.9 |
| Serie A | 37 | 5.5 | 54% | 6.0 |
| Championship | 42 | 5.5 | 40% | 5.9 |
Senior players who played most of their minutes in the Premier League the season before, then signed for a club in another of our leagues. Destinations with fewer than 12 signings are left out.
Three in four Premier League exports became regulars in LaLiga (75%) and the Bundesliga (74%), and the Bundesliga group averaged a Signing Impact of 7.0. Even the players who dropped into the Championship scored 5.5, well above the 4.6 average for signings coming the other way into the Premier League.
Know the league, settle faster
The safest signing is usually one who already knows the league. In the Premier League, Championship, Bundesliga, LaLiga, Serie A and Eredivisie, players signed from inside the league beat arrivals from elsewhere.
| Signed into | Same league | Another of our leagues | Outside our 20 leagues | Signings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | 5.1 | 4.7 | 3.0 | 153 / 312 / 66 |
| Championship | 5.7 | 4.8 | 4.4 | 243 / 304 / 212 |
| Bundesliga | 5.8 | 4.9 | 4.1 | 114 / 254 / 103 |
| LaLiga | 5.5 | 5.0 | 3.7 | 156 / 238 / 127 |
| Serie A | 5.1 | 4.4 | 3.7 | 241 / 295 / 164 |
| Ligue 1 | 5.0 | 5.3 | 4.3 | 108 / 239 / 175 |
| Eredivisie | 5.3 | 4.9 | 4.7 | 121 / 213 / 198 |
| Süper Lig | 4.8 | 5.8 | 4.1 | 188 / 234 / 357 |
Average Signing Impact by where the player played the season before. Green = the best of the three for that league. Signings column = same league / another of our leagues / outside.
Premier League clubs got 5.1 from signings already in the league, 4.7 from our other leagues and 3.0 from outside them. Ligue 1 and the Süper Lig are the exceptions: both get more from players arriving from other leagues than from their own.
Which player types travel best
Style matters as well as origin. Across all 20 leagues, defensive and deep-lying profiles carry their level to a new club. Creative attackers and high-energy forwards are the ones who drop.
| Archetype before the move | Signings | Regulars | Score change vs players who stayed | Score change when stepping up |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Defender | 549 | 53% | −0.01 | −0.42 |
| Ball Winner | 332 | 48% | −0.01 | −0.47 |
| Deep Playmaker | 195 | 52% | −0.03 | – |
| Advanced Playmaker | 171 | 46% | −0.04 | – |
| Progressive Carrier | 263 | 44% | −0.07 | −0.44 |
| Wide Defender | 615 | 49% | −0.08 | −0.48 |
| Inside Forward | 146 | 39% | −0.11 | −0.39 |
| Box-to-Box | 199 | 47% | −0.15 | −0.30 |
| Pressing Forward | 208 | 32% | −0.22 | −0.87 |
| Explosive Winger | 231 | 33% | −0.24 | −1.02 |
| Attacking Midfielder | 316 | 41% | −0.34 | −0.87 |
All senior summer signings across our 20 leagues, 2022 to 2025, outfield archetypes with 100+ rated movers. "Vs players who stayed" takes out the normal year-to-year change for that archetype at the same club. Stepping up compares Scores in each player's own league, so a drop is expected; compare the rows with each other. A dash = fewer than 30 players stepped up.
Central Defenders, Ball Winners and Deep Playmakers score almost exactly what you would expect if they had stayed put. Attacking Midfielders (−0.34), Explosive Wingers (−0.24) and Pressing Forwards (−0.22) lose the most. When they also step up a level, Explosive Wingers drop by 1.02 points, against 0.30 for Box-to-Box midfielders. Archetypes describe how a player plays, not his registered position; you can read more in Player Archetypes Explained.
What it means for this summer's signings
Several of the 2026 transfers we analysed came through these routes. Our second verdict on the summer signings has the full picture (league data to 25 October 2026); here is how the route groups compare so far. None of these players has reached the 600 minutes the app needs for an archetype, so treat every Score as a first read.
The Bundesliga route: Johan Manzambi (Freiburg to Aston Villa, a reported £59.5m) has the best start of the group: a Score of 8.7 in 323 league minutes from five appearances, with two goals and two assists, up from 7.8 at Freiburg. Chema Andrés (Stuttgart to Brighton, a reported £22m) is on 6.5 in 344 minutes, with a goal and an assist.
The Ligue 1 route: Mamadou Sangaré (Lens to Brentford, a reported £41m) is on 5.7 in 495 minutes, down from 8.1 at Lens, and Bradley Barcola (PSG to Liverpool, a reported £123m) is also on 5.7, in 425 minutes, with two assists but no league goal yet.
The hardest route: Christos Tzolis joined Arsenal from Club Brugge, and the Belgian Pro League sits outside our 20 leagues, so his move belongs to the weakest group in the table above. His Score is 6.2 in 365 minutes, against 8.9 at Brugge, and a hamstring injury has kept him out since mid-October.
Inside the league: the biggest group again. Morgan Rogers (Aston Villa to Chelsea) is on 8.2 in 703 minutes with four goals and an assist, and Elliot Anderson (Nottingham Forest to Manchester City) is on 8.6 in 608 minutes, almost exactly his Forest level.
Price the route, not just the player
A player's last league is part of the scouting report. Bundesliga signings arrive closest to ready; a Championship or second-tier star is a bigger bet than his numbers suggest, however good his season was.
None of this rules a player in or out. Every route has its successes and its failures, and these are averages over hundreds of moves. What it changes is the level of proof you should ask for, and how long you should expect a player to need.
The Bottom Line
The best route into the Premier League runs through Germany. Bundesliga signings averaged 6.0 and 60% became regulars, while Championship signings (3.9) and players from outside our 20 leagues (3.0) struggled most. The second-tier step is the hardest in every big country, players leaving the Premier League thrive almost wherever they go, and signings who already know the league settle fastest. For the 2026 arrivals, Manzambi has started like a Bundesliga signing should; Tzolis, injured and on the hardest route, has the most to prove.
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