African players in the Premier League

By Ashleigh Jackson & Tom Rostance

BBC Sport

18 Mar
From the sectionFootball

Peter Ndlovu was the first.

Now 246 African players have played in the Premier League since it began in 1992, scoring 1,776 goals in 14,210 appearances.

Chelsea legend Didier Drogba has scored the most goals (104), Kolo Toure has made the most appearances (349) while Nigeria (35) has contributed the most players.

As the Premier League live fan park comes to Cape Town this weekend learn all you need to know about African players in the English top flight.

All statistics correct as of 18 March 2016.

You can read an accessible version of this graphic here.

African players per club — Portsmouth (24) have had the most African players in the Premier League while Bradford City, Nottingham Forest, Oldham Athletic and Swindon Town had none.

For a breakdown of which players played for these 10 clubs, click here.

Goals by Africans — Didier Drogba (104) has scored the most goals by an African player. Africans have scored 1,776 goals in the Premier League.

Chart showing number of African players per season — An influx of 10 new African signings in January has pushed this season's total up to 57 - just two below the record from 2007-08.

Nigeria may have contributed the most players from Africa to the Premier League (35) but it is Egypt that has the most fans of Premier League clubs on Facebook.

Some 2,150,953 Egyptians follow Arsenal on the social media platform, while 3,129,223 support Chelsea.

Perhaps the most significant example of fans from a country following a team because of a specific player comes at Leicester City.

The Premier League leaders have 347,998 friends in Algeria - a huge 16.6 % of their total - which dwarfs the 139,982 fans they have in the UK.

Is that the Riyad Mahrez effect?