As a Chelsea trivia buff, one question which intrigued me as the Blues closed in on the signing of Juan Cuadrado from Fiorentina during the January transfer window was about the number of different nationalities who have played for the club.

The number that I got from a reliable informant was 40. However, if Cuadrado makes his Chelsea debut at Villa Park this weekend, he would become the first Colombian to play for our first team, bringing that number up to 41.

From what I understand, the number reflects the countries that those Chelsea players have represented rather than the place where they were born. So Frank Sinclair, who was born and raised in London, is classified as Jamaican after playing for the Reggae Boyz at the 1998 World Cup, while Australia-born Tony Dorigo is considered English after pulling on the Three Lions shirt at the 1990 World Cup.

It doesn’t include players who have not made the first team like James and Phil Younghusband, who were turning out for Chelsea reserves while representing the Philippines at international level, or Bertrand Traore, currently on loan at Vitesse Arnhem, who recently played for Burkina Faso at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Indeed, Cuadrado is not even the first Colombian to have joined the Blues as Under-20 star Joao Rodriguez was signed by the club back in 2013 but has yet to play for Chelsea and is now on loan at Portuguese top flight side Vitoria.

Now you can break down that number whichever you see fit and come to your own conclusions but what I find pertinent is that in terms of playing personnel alone, Chelsea Football Club can be looked on as something akin to a United Nations of football.

In our current first team, we have players of 12 different nationalities (English, Czech, Serbian, Brazilian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Belgian, Ivorian, Nigerian, Danish and Colombian) who are under a Portuguese manager. However, if you go deeper, you’ll find even more evidence of the club’s international scope when it comes to players.

On loan right now, we have Ghanaian winger Christian Atsu, who scored two goals including a stunning curler in his country’s recent 3-0 quarter-final win over Guinea in the Africa Cup of Nations, Chilean winger Cristian Cuevas and Mexican midfielder Ulises Davila.

And in the Chelsea Academy, you will find exciting young prospects from Somalia (Mukhtar Ali), Poland (Hubert Adamczyk), Ecuador (Josimar Quintero) and Brunei (Faiq Bolkiah) playing for our under-18s and under-21s.

I don’t expect all of them to make it to the first team or to become club legends but it is heartening for me to know as an international supporter that talented players of many different nationalities are being given their opportunity by Chelsea Football Club.

The sustained success we have enjoyed at Stamford Bridge since our FA Cup triumph in 1997 means the Blues now have a huge international following. And given the large international make-up of our players, we can all be proud as Chelsea fans to say that we all support a truly global football institution.

Culled from www.chelseafc.com