European Baseball Championships: The Impact of Dual Citizen Players

January 12, 2026

By Carter Cromwell

With the 2025 European Baseball Championship tournament in their rearview mirrors, the continent’s baseball-playing countries can now look ahead.

Not simply to their next seasons, or even to the next European Championship in 2027, but to the larger picture – how they can continue developing the game and enhancing the competitiveness of their national teams.  And the approaches vary.

For the first time since its inception in 1954, games in the 2025 European Championship were held in multiple locations – Italy (Milan), the Netherlands (Rotterdam), and Belgium (Antwerp) – an indication of broader interest in the game.  More than 25 members of the Baseball Jobs Overseas family either played for or helped coach a team.  

The Netherlands, of course, won the title by going undefeated in six games and edging Italy in the final.  Czechia was third – its highest finish ever – followed by Spain, Germany, and Great Britain in the 16-team tournament.  The championships have usually taken place every two years, and the Dutch have been by far the biggest winners, taking 25 of the 38 tournaments, including five of the last six and 10 of the last 13.  The Italians are next with 10 titles, while Spain has won twice and Belgium once.

Photo: The Netherlands won their 25th European Baseball Championship in 2025, 15 more than Italy, the second-most winning team in tournament history. Photo credit: WBSC Europe

So how have the stronger teams gotten there, and how are the others trying to get there?  Well, as said earlier, it varies.  There is no single answer, and there is no “right” answer.

Some countries rely heavily on players who were born elsewhere but were able to obtain dual citizenship. In many cases, they have experience playing in Major League Baseball (MLB) organizations and/or in the U.S. independent minor leagues.  Other programs use few “imports” and work to develop prospects who are natives of the respective countries, while some hew to a middle-of-the-road approach.

The Dutch benefit from being able to utilize talent not only from the Netherlands itself but from Caribbean locales such as Curacao, Aruba, and St. Maarten, which are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  Of the 24 players on the 2025 roster, three – Didi Gregorius, Jonathan Schoop, and Shairon Martis – played in MLB, with Gregorius and Schoop getting All-Star recognition.  Fifteen others had played in the minor leagues for MLB organizations.  Fourteen were born outside the Netherlands proper.  

Gregorius was voted the Most Valuable Player of the 2025 tournament – posting a slash line of .321/.345/.536 with a home run and three doubles – and the Netherlands’ Curacao-born Kevin Kelly was named Best Pitcher.  When Netherlands ace Tom de Blok suffered an injury in the first inning of the semifinal game against Spain, Kelly threw 8 1/3 shutout innings with 16 strikeouts and finished the tournament with a record of 10 2/3 scoreless innings and 21 strikeouts.  Schoop, meanwhile, hit .364/.464/.727 with two home runs and seven RBIs.

Photo: Didi Gregorius was named the MVP of the 2025 European Baseball Championship after leading the Netherlands to the title. As the starting shortstop, he powered the team, including a lead-off home run against Great Britain, and was vital in their 6–5 championship victory over Italy in Rotterdam. Photo credit: Elsa/Getty Images.

Of the Italian players, 12 were born outside Italy.  Three had played in the U.S. minor leagues, two in college in the United States, and four had participated in the developmental Dominican Summer League.  

The Czechs have focused more on developing internally, with just three of their players born outside of Czechia.  They had one MLB veteran, Eric Sogard, who obtained Czech citizenship in 2022, as well as two players with U.S. minor league experience, and four with U.S. collegiate backgrounds.

Spain and Great Britain, which finished fourth and sixth, respectively, have taken the opposite approach.  All but two players on Spain’s roster were born elsewhere, while Great Britain’s roster included one player born in the U.K. and two from the British Virgin Islands.

Germany, the fifth-place team, focuses more on domestically developed talent, with just six players born outside of Germany.  And the differences don’t stop there.  Israel, which took seventh place, tends to rely more heavily on players not native to that country, while Croatia and Austria – eighth and ninth, respectively – focus more on developing in-country talent.  

American Luke Salas, who coached the Croatian team, noted that four of the team’s players were born in Venezuela but now live with their families and work in Croatia. The same is true, he said, of two Croatian-Americans.  

Photo: Canadian Ryan Johnson warms up in the bullpen during the 2025 European Championships while American pitcher, Jeff Barto, looks on. Both are former BBJO members who live full-time in Czechia and play for their national team. Photo credit: Matyáš Fous @matyasfous

Austria assistant coach Jimmy Jensen said that his club’s roster was comprised entirely of players living in the country, though three were born in the U.S., one in Japan, and one in Brazil.  

Again, there is no “correct” way to do it.  Despite the different approaches, five European teams – Czechia, Israel, Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands – all qualified for the 2026 World Baseball Classic.  

Czechia first qualified for the WBC in 2023 by upsetting Spain in the qualifier finals – after it had lost to Spain 21-7 earlier in the tournament.  Though they did not advance past pool play, they won one game, defeating China.  Many of their players are “locals” who have regular jobs in the workforce.  Even catcher Martin Cervenka, who reached the AAA level of the U.S. minor leagues and batted .542 with a 1.696 OPS in the European Championships, works as a sales representative.  

“We’ve always tried to focus on developing our in-country talent,” Czech coach Pavel Chadim said.  “We’ve had a few players from outside the country that have made big contributions, but we feel it’s most important to develop our base of Czech-born players.  That will make a big difference in the long run.”

The Germans mostly try to develop in-country talent, as well.  Eric Brenk is an American on the team, but he moved to Germany right after college, earned a master’s degree there, and has played 11 seasons in the German Bundesliga. 

“There is a big focus here on youth programs, such as the U-16s and U-18s,” Brenk said. “There is a good amount of investment here, as well as passionate coaches.  A lot of guys on the national team started playing here as youngsters and have played together for a long time.”

Brenk was disappointed in his team’s fifth-place finish after it had finished fourth in 2023.

“We finished first in our group and had beaten the Czechs earlier, but they won their quarterfinal game and we didn’t [losing to Italy],” he said, “so they advanced, even though we had the same overall record.”

Photo: Eric Brenk used BBJO in 2014 to play in Germany. Towards the end of the season, the German National Team discovered Eric’s mother was born in Germany, so they pulled some strings to expedite the process for Eric to obtain his German passport and return in the fall to join the German National Team for the European Championships. 

Anthony Bennett is an American who worked for MLB in China for several years, then began coaching a team in the Austrian league, and coached the Austrian U-23 team before becoming head coach of the Austrian national team in early 2025.  

“Our goal this year was to keep our status in Pool A,” he said. “In the past, we’ve gone up and down, but we knew we had a chance because our U-23s had defeated Germany and Italy in some previous tournaments.  And we finished ninth in the [European Championships],” he said. “It’s the second time we’ve ended up in the top ten, so it’s a step forward.  But now the real work begins because we can no longer sneak up on anyone.”

Bennett acknowledges that “there are some countries that are well ahead of us, body-wise and skill-wise, and which have academies where players can learn and grow their skills.  So our mission now is development.  Simply getting a couple of guys from overseas won’t get us over the hump in the long run.

“One thing we need to do is simply play more games.  In our league, we play just 24 games, and other countries have twice that amount.  Also, we play doubleheaders here, and our rules allow teams to start an import pitcher in only one of the games. That means only half our games are against import pitchers, so we don’t always face higher-quality pitching.  

“Athletically, we’re not there yet,” he added. “We’ve had some success with guys playing in the Japan Winter League and with a few going to college in the U.S. and Canada.  But, at this stage, we’re trying to grab the low-hanging fruit – working on skills, team building, and the mental aspects of the game – and biding our time until we can increase the strength and power of some of our younger players.”

Photo: Austria continues to surprise European baseball with their development, finishing with a record of 4 – 2 at the 2025 European Baseball Championship. 

Salas, the Croatia coach and former Texas Rangers farmhand, is co-founder of the non-profit organization Baseball for Good and says it has been helping to grow baseball in Europe for nearly 10 years.  

“We’ve always seen tremendous potential there,” he said. “We’ve brought in coaches and clinics, helped build fields, and worked with various national teams.  The big challenge is getting coaches there for youths.  Baseball is still a niche sport in Europe, and we saw that there was a huge drop-off in participation after the age of 12 or so, and we want to help plug that gap.

“We started an initiative called Baseball Ambassadors to get more youth coaches there,” he added. “This gives guys a chance to get coaching experience and, at the same time, provides coaches who can help develop players.  We launched the ambassador program in Croatia in 2024.  They asked me to lead the U-23 team at the European tourney last season, and then they asked me last November if I could coach the national team.”

Salas said the Croatian team in the European Championships had 12 “locals”, as well as six Croatian Americans.  The latter included ex-MLB infielder Joey Terdoslavich, as well as U.S. minor league veterans Jantzen Witte and pitcher Anthony Susac.  Former MLB pitcher Asher Wojciechowski served as the pitching coach.

“My job is to build the national team into something Croatian kids want to aspire to,” Salas said. “They currently gravitate toward soccer or basketball because there’s no path to making a living in baseball.  It’s critical at the moment to bring over a few players from the Croatian American diaspora, but we want to develop more Croatian players.  I think too many countries rely on the mercenary method, and we don’t want to build a roster of Americans just for the sake of winning.

“This is the first time [in the European Championships] that we’ve won our group,” he continued. “We were 4-0 and then gave the Dutch a really good game [losing 3-1].  To keep improving, we need more funding – more fields, coaches, resources.  We need to get the government more involved and have consistency down to the U-12 level. And the people we bring in have to be willing to coach down the line and keep supporting the program.”

Photo: With the addition of a supporting cast of  Venezuelan and Croatian-American players, Croatia has become a serious threat at the European Baseball Championship. Photo credit: WBSC Europe

Great Britain is in the position of having to rely mostly on players born elsewhere.  One example is outfielder/first baseman Julian Sanders, a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle.  He was 14-27 at the plate during the tournament with five doubles, three three-hit games and one game in which he got four hits.

The team finished second in the 2023 tournament, winning its first five games before losing to Spain in the final.  Great Britain also finished second in the tournament in 1967 and 2007.

This year, it placed second in its group and advanced to the quarterfinals, where it again fell to Spain.  

“It was a bit disappointing,” Great Britain assistant coach Jonathon Cramman acknowledged. 

Cramman noted that “We’re short on resources, so that makes it more difficult to fund developmental programs for our younger guys. Baseball is still a niche sport here, and kids tend to go into soccer first.

“To get government funding for a sport here, you have to show that you have a viable chance of qualifying for the Olympics, and we haven’t done that yet,” Cramman added.

Photo: Great Britain baseball is hoping that the MLB Series in London will have a trickle effect on the popularity of the sport in their country. 

Cramman is an outlier in that regard, as he picked up the sport early on and stuck with it to the exclusion of all others. And although the program still has a distance to travel, there have been some encouraging signs, such as the second-place finish in 2023 and Great Britain’s victory – its first – earlier this year in the U-23 European Championships.

That is certainly progress to national team head coach Brad Marcelino, who grew up in England until moving to the U.S. at the age of 11.

He has since coached in the Seattle Mariners organization and is currently a minor league hitting coordinator in the Arizona Diamondbacks system, but he has held to his British roots.  He first made the national team in 1999 and played in seven European Championship tournaments. He also played for Great Britain in the 2013 WBC Qualifiers and coached the team in the 2017 WBC Qualifiers and the 2023 WBC.

“[On the national team] in 1999 and 2001, we had to tape our numbers on the back of our jerseys,” Marcelino said prior to this year’s European tournament. “As a country, we don’t necessarily have the big funding … [But] you see this trajectory of the program and the types of players that we’re bringing in, like, ‘Man, I can’t believe this kid is eligible.’ So I see all these different things progressing for the program.”