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While I agree with your arguement in principle, I would actually disagree with your specific example that 'Chelsea would crush England'. If we ignore the mutual players that play for both, I believe that Ferdinand, Gerrard, Beckham and Rooney would definetly make it into Chelsea's starting XI, and think there is a reasonable arguement for Owen and Ashley Cole as well.

Of the Chelsea players who would make the England team I can only think of Cech and Robben/Duff (whoever you'd prefer on the left) who would definetly get in...with a few others where it may be a close call.

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there are some better formulations of my question in these replies: how many national teams would make a true top 20 (allowing players to be cloned as necessary), or where would some national team place in the EPL. I still go back and forth. It seems to be the argument above that the England national team may be a favorite to win the EPL. One might say that the countries with the strongest leagues quite naturally would have a national team superior to the club teams for the most part. When you break the club teams down and say that most of the players aren't actually worthy of the major natoinal teams, it speaks even more for the national teams. But would a Denmark or a Nigeria (think 1998) be a favorite in EPL--I go back and forth. also, this has changed a lot in 10 years hasn't it? I remember when romario, Stoichkov, and Hagi played together in Spain one of them had to be benched. was it the same in all club leagues? that must have made national teams usually superior? I guess I would suppose that the top 2 or maybe 3 teams in the top 3 or 4 leagues would probably contend for the world cup, but if you threw a denmark or nigera [or sweden or norway...] in those leagues while it might not win, it would contend. whereas the less than supreme club teams would not be competitive in a world cup.