Footballers playing in the highest percentage of their country’s games

“I saw a stat that Luka Modric has played in around 42% of all Croatia’s international games. On quick research, I found one player who can beat that (Fatos Beciraj of Montenegro at 67.5% but is there anyone else who has played in an even higher percentage of their nation’s games?” asks Richard Wilson.

Let’s start with a bit of housekee … wait, come back! There are so many different statistical resources on the internet, and a dispiritingly small number of them agree on, for example, how many games Gibraltar have played (belated spoiler alert!). So in the name of consistency we’ve taken the relevant data from RSSSF.com, adding this week’s games and cross-checking with the equally comprehensive eu-football.info.

Our first port of call is a principality in the eastern Pyrenees. “Ildefons Lima has played in 70.7% of Andorra’s games (133 of 188) ,” writes James Turley. “He played at Wembley last year, aged 41, and hasn’t retired yet so that figure could yet inch higher.”

Dara O’Reilly has the names of a couple of Kosovans. “Since their accession to Fifa in 2014, Kosovo have played 62 recognised international matches,” writes Dara. “Torino’s Mergim Vojvoda have featured in 45 of them, while another Serie A stopper, Napoli’s Amir Rrahmani, has played 44. That’s 72.9% and 71%, respectively.”

There are a few candidates in the Gibraltar team, as mentioned by David Ekstrand and Ben Blatch-Hanlon among others. Gibraltar have played 66 full internationals, of which Liam Walker has appeared in 59 (or 89.4%), Roy Chipolina 57 (86.4%) and Joseph Chipolina 47 (71.2%).

Gibraltar’s stats will change over time but Saarland’s are probably set in stone. “Saarland was a French protectorate partitioned from Germany after the second world