It might be the case that both culture and more lenient refereeing are incentives for EPL clubs to sign especially physical footballers but those aren't some kind of lab grown super soldiers but slightly more athletic than the average across the top leagues. That is simply down to sports science and the law of diminishing returns.
And even more importantly, physicality doesn't even help you that much. If you rush at an opponent who has the ball, you give away the space you vacate while doing so and if he has easy passing options, that is quickly exploited and all your physicality earns you nothing. That is the reason why across all top leagues, the players tend to be less physical the higher you move up the table. They still are athletic, sure, but rather in a Bernardo Silva fashion where they can cover lots of ground and change directions quickly to hold up the pressure on the defense and minimize the ball recovery time.
So the reason why physical dribblers work better for United and the likes is that you allow the opponent to isolate your players. And then, the lenient refereeing means that you need pace and strength to hold off opponengs who are allowed to wrestle you. But if you provide the player on the ball options - which is the key principle of positional play used by Guardiola and Slot - then charging at him is tactical suicide.
This is the reason why top level football sometimes seems so slow. If you are playing against good opponents, you can't give away space because they will punish you for that. And it is the reason why Wirtz shined so much under Alonso and was able to constantly embarass some of Bundesliga's most physical defenders such as Dayot Upamecano or Victor Orban who would belong to the most athletic defenders in England as well.
Among English fans, physicality often seems like a means to an end. The clubs whomunderstood it isn't are currently the most succeasful in the country. That would have me thinking.
