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A Record Number Of Americans Have Appeared In This Champions League Match Day

The UEFA Champions League is where the best of the best in men’s soccer compete: Ronaldo, Messi, Mané, Lewandowski — and a whole bunch of Yanks. This week, the fifth match day of the 2020-21 competition, featured more Americans in Champions League action than ever before.

With Konrad de la Fuente coming on as a substitute for Barcelona in the 80th minute on Wednesday, a record seven Americans appeared in the UCL this week. 

Four of the seven Americans started their matches, including Sergiño Dest at Barcelona, Weston McKennie at Juventus, Christian Pulisic at Chelsea and Claudio Reyna at Borussia Dortmund. Tyler Adams played the entire second half for RB Leipzig and Chris Richards came on for the final 30 minutes for Bayern Munich. 

It could’ve been more, but goalkeeper Ethan Horvath remained on the bench for Club Brugge. Because Horvath had already appeared in the UCL this season, Americans had already set a record with eight players in this season’s competition. 

The previous record for Americans in Champions League came in the 2004-05 season, when Robbie Russell, Damarcus Beasley, Tim Howard, Jermaine Jones, Landon Donovan and Jonathan Spector appeared in the competition. However, this year’s crop of talent has already passed that group in games played with 24, two more than the group 15 years ago recorded in the entire campaign. 

Even more impressive, except for Horvath, all of these players are 22 or younger, including two teenagers, Reyna and Konrad. And the clubs they’re playing for are some of the best in the world. 

All that said, hopefully these youngsters break the record next week for Americans in Champions League action in a single match week if Horvath can get over Simon Mignolet and all of the other Americans who played this week play again.

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