Manchester City will have 19 players who last played a club match for them at the 2026 World Cup, the most from any club in English football and the highest total of any side across world football. It is a new benchmark for the club as squads for the tournament across North America take shape.
The scale of City’s spread across national teams is striking. England have four of their players in Thomas Tuchel’s 26-man list, with James Trafford joined by Marc Guehi, Nico O’Reilly and John Stones, while Portugal have three current City players, including Bernardo Silva, who is leaving the club this summer, as well as Ruben Dias and Matheus Nunes.
Their reach does not stop there. The Netherlands and Croatia each have two City players, with Tijjani Reijnders and Nathan Ake in the Dutch squad and Mateo Kovacic and Josko Gvardiol with Croatia. Erling Haaland is in Norway’s squad, Omar Marmoush in Egypt’s, Rayan Cherki in France’s, Jeremy Doku in Belgium’s, Rodri in Spain’s, Rayan Ait-Nouri in Algeria’s, Antoine Semenyo in Ghana’s and Abdukodir Khusanov in Uzbekistan’s.
That total is built without counting players who finished last season on loan elsewhere, a detail that matters because some clubs’ headline numbers are padded by temporary departures. Sunderland initially had nine players who last played a club game for them, but that rose after Lutsharel Geertruida earned a late call-up to the Netherlands squad on Monday, and their total also includes two players who were out on loan.
City’s 19 is more than Bayern Munich and Paris St-Germain, who each have 16, and ahead of Barcelona on 15 and Arsenal on 14. There are 18 teams with 10 or more players who last played club football for them at the tournament, including six English clubs. The expansion of the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams has helped push the single-club record higher, with Barcelona’s 17 four years ago in Qatar setting the previous mark and City matching 16 as joint-second behind them then. Four years earlier in Russia, City led with 16 and Barcelona had 14, a reminder of how far the club’s player pool has widened since then.
The count is also incomplete in one sense: no single published roster lays out all 19 City names together, but the spread across England, Portugal, the Netherlands, Croatia and beyond already shows the same thing. When the World Cup begins in North America in summer 2026, City will not just be represented. It will be everywhere.
