Former Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City players are among the handful of footballers who have played in all of Europe’s top five leagues.
While there’s often debate over which leagues are the strongest, we’re talking about the traditional big five for the purposes of this article.
Here are the five players who have played in the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1.
Christian Poulsen
The Danish defensive midfielder played for eight different clubs throughout his career and enjoyed stints in each of Europe’s top five leagues.
His most memorable spells came with Schalke, Sevilla and Juventus, where he spent the prime years of his career.
In 2010, Liverpool purchased him for around £4.5million, although he only lasted one season at Anfield before he was on the move once again.
After leaving Liverpool in 2011, Poulsen completed the set of Europe’s top leagues as he joined Evian in Ligue 1 for the 2011-12 campaign.
He’s since retired from professional football and was recently the assistant coach for the Denmark national team.
Florin raducoiu
The Romanian forward enjoyed a career which spanned 19 years from 1985 to 2004.
He played for 10 different clubs throughout his career and rarely stuck around in one place for long.
After making a name for himself in his native country, he moved to Italy in 1990 and had stints with Bari, Hellas Verona, Brescia and AC Milan.
In 1994, he then moved to Spain and played for Espanyol, where he enjoyed some of the best years of his career.
West Ham picked him up in 1996, although he struggled to adapt to English football and only lasted half a season with the Hammers before returning to Spain.
Raducioiu spent one year playing in Germany for Stuttgart and shortly before retiring, spent a brief spell with Monaco, where he scored twice in 12 appearances.
Stevan Jovetic
Once tipped to be one of the most promising strikers of his generation, Joventic was highly sought after during his early years with Fiorentina.
After boasting an impressive scoring record in Italy, he moved to Manchester City in 2013 for a fee of around £23million.
The Montenegro international scored 11 goals during his two-year spell in England, but injuries had already started to hamper his game time by this point.
That’s ultimately been a theme throughout Jovetic’s career, particularly in his later years with Sevilla, Monaco and Hertha BSC.
Between 2017 and 2021, the striker missed over 150 games through various injuries and he’s been unfortunate enough to have endured two separate ACL injuries at different points of his career.
Despite the injury hell that he’s endured, the 35-year-old is still playing professionally today for Omonia in Cyprus.
Justin Kluivert
Impressively, Kluivert managed to tick off every European top league before turning 25.
While playing for Roma, the Dutch forward had loan spells in Germany, France and Spain, before then making the permanent switch to Bournemouth in England.
The 26-year-old has since established himself as a top performer in the Premier League, having produced 18 goal contributions in the league last season.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Aubameyang’s inclusion on this list does come with an asterisk.
While he has had memorable spells in France, England, Spain and Germany, he’s never actually made an appearance in Italy’s top flight.
The Gabon international was on the books at AC Milan from 2007 to 2011, but never made a league appearance for the Italian club, despite a few inclusions on the bench.
He’s therefore technically never played in Serie A, although given he was on the books at Milan for four years, we’ve included him on our list here.
His most prolific spells came during his time in Germany with Dortmund and England with Arsenal. He also made good impressions while playing for Barcelona, Saint-Etienne and Marseille too.
Now aged 36, he’s currently on the lookout for his next club, having most recently played for Al-Qadsiah in Saudi Arabia.
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