Top 30 ranked
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Manuel Neuer made history on Tuesday night when his Bayern Munich side kicked off their Champions League clash with Atletico Madrid in the Spanish capital. The senior shot-stopper was tasked with guarding his goal in the high-profile European showdown and as a result made his 164th appearance in the top-tier competition. Over the course of his career, the German goliath has featured in the competition for Schalke on 22 occasions and for Bayern in 142 games, making him the player with the third highest number of appearances in the Champions League.
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Cristiano Ronaldo leads the list with 183 appearances, a total built across three clubs and three different eras of the competition: 101 games for Real Madrid, 59 for Manchester United and 23 for Juventus. Behind him sits Iker Casillas on 177, the highest-placed goalkeeper and a figure whose 150 Real Madrid appearances in this competition are the most any player has recorded for a single club in the top ten. The gap of six games between first and second is the narrowest anywhere in the upper reaches of the table.
As we now know, Neuer’s 164 appearances put him third and, crucially, one clear of Lionel Messi and Thomas Müller, who are level on 163. Müller’s figure carries a distinction of its own: all 163 came for Bayern Munich, making him one of only two players in the top ten to have spent an entire Champions League career at a single club. Messi’s 163 divides into 149 for Barcelona and 14 for Paris Saint-Germain. Karim Benzema (152) and Toni Kroos (151) follow, separated by a single game, with Xavi level on 151 games for Barcelona. Benzema’s 133 Real Madrid appearances plus 19 for Lyon make him the highest-placed Frenchman in the dataset, while Kroos is one of several players here whose total spans two European heavyweights, having played 110 times for Real Madrid and 41 for Bayern.
The top ten closes with Robert Lewandowski on 144, Luka Modric on 142 and Raúlalso on 142, with Sergio Ramos immediately behind on the same figure. Lewandowski is the only player in the group to have appeared for three clubs – Bayern (78), Barcelona (38) and Borussia Dortmund (28). Raúl, whose 130 Madrid appearances came before the competition’s modern expansion, is the closest thing here to a bridge between the two eras.
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