The Croatian tennis player is through to the quarterfinals of the ATP tournament in Rome after defeating Belgian David Goffin on Thursday with 6-3, 6-4 after an hour and a half of play

Water polo players of Jug Croatia Osiguranje have seized their 13th Croatian Champion title after defeating Mladost from Zagreb with 11-4 (2-1, 2-1, 2-0, 5-2) in the third games of the playoffs

After finding out four Croats made it to the Champions League final for the first time in history, another interesting statistic turns up: according to the CIES Football Observatory monthly report, Croatia ranks surprisingly high on the world list of expatriate footballers.

The report analysed 137 leagues of 93 national associations worldwide, including all expatriate players present in the first team squads of clubs up to May 1st 2017. Bench players were also included where a list of substitutes was available – in this case, 116 out of 137 leagues. The final sample is made out of 12.051 expatriate footballers playing in 2120 clubs, resulting in an average of 5.7 expatriates per club.

Croatia ranks 8th on the list with 323 expatriate footballers currently present on the field worldwide, 92% of those playing for clubs in UEFA countries. The world leader in exporting football players is Brazil with a total of 1202 expatriates, followed by France (781), Argentina (753), Serbia (460) and England (451); Croatia comes closer to Germany (335) and Spain (362). It's interesting to note the first three countries on the list together make up 22.7% of the total number of expatriate players worldwide, that percentage increasing to 43.5% if we take only the top ten on the list into account.

Seeing that Croatia is by far the smallest out of all listed countries, we can safely call ourselves the number one exporter of football players. That's not really a title to be proud of: as much as it points to the impressive quality of Croatian athletes, it's disappointing to see our greatest players sold to foreign clubs as soon as someone shows interest.

Here's a list of 25 principal exporters:

CIES Football Observatory monthly report, May 2017

Source: Jutarnji

Croatian tennis player Borna Ćorić defeated Andy Murray, the best tennis player in the world, in the eighth finals of the tournament in Madrid

Marin Čilić and Ivo Karlović failed to move on to round three of the ATP Master Series tournament in Spain

Croatian tennis player Borna Ćorić is through to the 3rd round of the ATP Master Series Tournament in Madrid, defeating Frenchman Pierre-Hugues Herbert with 7-5, 6-4 in an hour and 26 minutes of play

Croatian tennis player Ivo Karlović is through to the second round of the ATP Master Series tournament in Madrid, defeating Spanish Roberto Bautista with 7-6 (4), 6-7 (9), 7-6 (7) after exactly three hours of play

The last day of the Basketball World School Championship in Poreč saw the duel of Croatian and Danish players for seventh place and the defeat of the women’s Croatian team against Hungary, also for seventh place. The world champions are the women’s team from Serbia and men’s team from Turkey

The best ranked Croatian tennis player defeated first-seeded Canadian Miloš Raonić with 7-6 (3), 6-3 after two hours of play

Marin Cilic defeated Argentinean Diego Schwartzmann, otherwise last years ATP tournament winner, with 6-1, 7-6 (7) after 99 minutes of play on Saturday in Istanbul during the semi finals.