What club will have the most players at the World Cup?

Analysis

Tom Weber | Writer

Multilingual sports writer who specialises in European football and American soccer.

The opening game of the 2026 World Cup is now just a week away, and all the participating nations have announced their rosters.

The expanded tournament, which is taking place in Canada, Mexico and the USA, will feature a record 48 countries, meaning that there will be more games and more players than ever before.

An unprecedented 1,248 stars have been called up by their respective national teams, with Lionel Messi (Argentina), Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) and Guillermo Ochoa (Mexico) each ready to experience a record-breaking sixth World Cup.

Scotland goalkeeper Craig Gordon will be the oldest player at the tournament, aged 43, while 17-year-old Mexico starlet Gilberto Mora will be the youngest - a gap of 25 years!

There have been several notable omissions, with England boss Thomas Tuchel leaving a few high-profile Premier League stars at home. Similarly, Spain coach Luis de la Fuente refrained from calling up any Real Madrid stars, a first in La Roja's World Cup history.

The teams with most World Cup players

Despite De la Fuente's snub, Los Blancos will still be represented by an impressive 10 players at the tournament, most notably Kylian Mbappe (France), Vinicius Jr (Brazil) and Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid).

This number is nothing to scoff at, but it does not put the Spanish giants among the clubs to have sent the most players to this summer's World Cup. The likes of Crystal Palace, Al-Hilal (both 12), Borussia Dortmund and Galatasaray (both 11) boast more than Real Madrid.

Liverpool and Man Utd will have 11 and 12 players at the World Cup, respectively, although it can be argued that the Red Devils will actually send 13. However, Marcus Rashford will travel as a Barcelona player, having spent the season on loan in Catalunya.

Indeed, all the numbers here are based on the current campaign, which doesn't formally end until 30 June. Loan players are therefore counted as belonging to their temporary rather than their parent clubs.

Atletico Madrid are another club with 12 World Cup participants, putting them behind league rivals Barcelona. The two clubs are currently locked in a heated transfer battle for Julian Alvarez - one of Atleti's six Argentines - who reportedly wants to join the reigning LaLiga champions.

15 Barcelona players have been called up, eight of them by Spain alone. Teenage striker Hamza Abdelkarim, who joined the Blaugrana in January, has yet to play for the senior team, but that hasn't stopped him from making the Egypt squad.

Champions League finalists Arsenal and PSG will each send 16 players to the World Cup, while Bayern Munich's contingent numbers no less than 18 - that's the second-largest of any club. Seven of those 18 play for the German national team.

Premier League runners-up Man City will be the club with the most players at the upcoming World Cup. A remarkable 19 of the Cityzens' 28 senior players have been called up to FIFA's showpiece event.

That includes four England stars - Marc Guehi, John Stones, Nico O'Reilly and James Trafford - as well as three key Portugal players in departing captain Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias and Mateus Nunes. Croatia and the Netherlands have both chosen two City players.

Interestingly, the Czech Republic are the national team that rely most heavily on players from one club, with 10 Slavia Prague stars having been called up by Miroslav Koubek, who coached the Red and Whites for a few months in 2013/2014.

Exploring the leagues where World Cup players earn their daily bread is also an interesting exercise. Naturally, elite divisions like the Premier League and LaLiga boast the most players, but there are some really interesting outliers.

New Zealand's Tommy Smith and Haiti's Josue Duverger hold the distinction of being the only fifth-division players to make it to this summer's World Cup. Smith played in the National League South with Braintree in the season just gone and actually ended up getting relegated.

The Macclesfield-born former Ipswich defender could face the likes of Romelu Lukaku, Kevin de Bruyne and Mohamed Salah over the coming weeks. Smith's Kiwis were actually just demolished 4-0 by Duverger's Haiti.

The Montreal-born goalkeeper plays his club football for Cosmos Koblenz in Germany's Oberliga Rheinland-Pfalz/Saar. They finished solidly in mid-table in 2025/26. Should he manage to get on the field, he could face Neymar, Vinicius Jr, Achraf Hakimi and Scott McTominay.

No fourth division will be represented at the World Cup, while England's League One is the only third tier that has seen some of its players called up. Barnsley, Charlton, Luton, Peterborough, Port Vale and Rotherham could all be namedropped at the World Cup.

Perhaps FIFA has a point when it says that the squads for the upcoming tournament "reflect unprecedented diversity and worldwide representation."

Written by

Tom Weber | Writer

Tom Weber is an experienced, multilingual sports writer who specialises in European football and American soccer as part of his freelance work for FootballTransfers.

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