A regional daily has produced an interactive map showing every foreign player that its two rival football clubs have signed since 1893.

The Manchester Evening News mapped all 204 foreign stars to have played for Manchester United and Manchester City – either signed by the club or academy products – by their hometown over the last 120 years.

Visitors to the MEN’s website and other mobile users can scroll year-by-year through the map to find which players were signed, which team they played for, what year they joined and which country they are from.

The idea for the map, which uses innovative Tableau Software to display the information, came after MEN journalist Simon Bajkowski noticed how few English players were linked with the clubs when he was covering the September transfer window.

The interactive map invites users to scroll through the history of Manchester's foreign footballers.

Said Simon: “I must confess I wasn’t sure what directions things would take at this point but as I realised both how many foreign players had signed for the two clubs and how far the records went back I began to visualise how I would like to see the data as a reader.

“With help from Rob Grant and the Trinity Mirror data team based here in Manchester, I was able turn all the records into an interactive map that charted players from all over the world over the last 120 years.

“To accompany that, I produced a story going into some of the tales of the players that was also used in Friday’s paper edition of the MEN, and also a quiz, picture galleries, poll stories and Foreign XIs for City and United.

“It was very time-consuming but a lot of fun to do, and I was really happy with how things turned out. I am also relieved that any updates made to the map will only be a fraction of the work it was to do it in the first place!”

A ‘Footsie Index’ has also been produced by the Trinity Mirror title for both a clubs – an online gadget showing which players each set of fans want to buy and sell.

The graphic is constantly updated and displays the top five most picked players from each club with a thermometer showing the proportion of fans who want to sell each player, and the average price showing how much fans think each player is worth.

The interactive map of foreign footballers in Manchester can be viewed by clicking here.