Ahead of Sunderland’s first season in Europe in over fifty years, there’s been a lot of debate about how the extra eight matches – and hopefully more – will affect our league form and our squad.
It’s easy to assume that Granit Xhaka is the only member of our squad with real European experience and given recent developments and rumours regarding his future, this could be a concerning thought.
However, I believe it’s important to recognise the vast experience our existing squad across UEFA’s competitions
aside from the Swiss international. Using www.transfermarkt.com and the app Fotmob, I’ve attempted to explore this.
Granit Xhaka
Across his career, Switzerland’s record appearance holder has made ninety five appearances in the Champions League (thirty two games) and the Europa League (sixty three games) combined for Arsenal, Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Mönchengladbach and FC Basel, as well as a further six qualifying matches.
Xhaka’s Champions League debut came in November 2010 as a late sub for Basel in a 1-0 win against CFR Cluj, and two weeks later he played forty five minutes in a 3-0 loss to Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena. Basel finished third in their group and were demoted to the Europa League, and Xhaka started both of their knockout games. A certain Aiden McGeady, then playing for Spartak Moscow, scored the goal that ultimately sent Basel home.
Most notably, Xhaka played a key role in Bayer Leverkusen reaching the 2024 Europa League final, after having already won the league and cup unbeaten.
Xhaka started ten games across the campaign and registered two assists, including one in the second leg of the semi-final against Roma. Unfortunately, Leverkusen fell at the final hurdle and lost 3-0 in the final against Atalanta. He’s scored five Europa League goals as well as one Champions League goal for Arsenal against Ludogorets Razgrad in 2017.
Reinildo
Reinildo is the only Mozambican to play in the Premier League. He’s played in the Champions League for both Atletico Madrid and LOSC Lille, and represented Lille six times in the Europa League in the 2020-2021 season.
In total, he has made twenty five Champions League appearances, the first of which came for Lille against Frank Lampard’s Chelsea in 2019. Playing for Atlético, he reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League in both 2022 and 2024.
Reinildo also featured in a round of sixteen tie against rivals Real Madrid in 2025 – this game finished 2-2 and Atlético eventually lost on penalties.
Omar Alderete
Alderete has been a monster in defence since his arrival from Getafe.
He has one season’s worth of European football to his name so far, and like Xhaka’s first European games, this came for Basel. In the 2019/2020 season, Alderete started ten matches as Basel advanced to the quarter-final of the Europa League.
In a season affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Basel were knocked out by Shakhtar Donetsk in a one-legged 4-1 loss. This match was played behind closed doors in Germany in August after it was initially suspended in mid-March.
Alderete also played five games for Argentinian side Huracán in the Copa Libertadores and five games for Paraguayan outfit Club Cerro Porteño in the Copa Sudamericana – the South American equivalents of the Champions League and Europe League respectively.
Nordi Mukiele
Mukiele used to play with Lionel Messi, and he has made 35 Champions League appearances in his career.
Twenty three of these were for Leipzig, seven for PSG and five when playing alongside Xhaka for Leverkusen. He also made seven appearances across two Europa League campaigns for Leipzig, including his European debut in the 2018/2019 edition of the competition.
Mukiele also has three Champions League goals — two for Leipzig and one for Leverkusen. His goal for Leverkusen was a last-minute winner against Inter Milan in 2024, in a 1-0 victory which proved crucial in securing a round of sixteen tie against Bayern Munich.
His first for Leipzig came in a 4-3 win away to İstanbul Başakşehir in 2020 and his second was against his former team PSG a year later.
The fact that players like Nordi and Xhaka who have played at such a high level for such good teams now play for Sunderland still beggars belief, and it is testament to how far this club has come in such a short space of time.
Noah Sadiki
Sadiki has twenty two appearances to his name in the Europa League and the Conference League. Nineteen of these were for Union Saint-Gilloise while his first three were for Anderlecht.
He featured ten times as Union SG reached the playoffs in 2024/2025 but lost against Ajax after extra time.
Bertrand Traoré and Jordan Henderson both came off the bench in the second leg of the tie, and Brian Brobbey was an unused substitute in the first leg.
Enzo Le Fée
In the 2023/2024 season, Le Fée played six times and registered three assists for Rennes as they reached the round of thirty two of the Europa League.
Having signed for Roma in the summer of 2024, he played another three games in the Europa League. This consisted of starts against Dynamo Kyiv and Union SG, and a cameo off the bench against Braga.
That January, he arrived on Wearside and the rest is history.
Chemsdine Talbi
Before signing for Sunderland last summer, Talbi played eleven games in the 2024/2025 Champions League for Club Brugge as the Belgian side reached the round of sixteen before losing to Aston Villa.
Talbi started seven games in the competition and made a further four appearances off the bench, and it was in the two-legged playoff game against Atalanta in which he made the biggest impact. First, in Club Brugge’s home leg, he registered an assist in a 2-1 win.
In the away leg in Bergamo, Talbi scored a brace to help his team reach the last sixteen, with former Sunderland stopper Simon Mignolet also saved a penalty in that match. Talbi made his European debut the previous season in a win away to PAOK Thessaloniki in the Conference League.
Nilson Angulo
Angulo played six games in the Europa League in 2024/2025 and four games in the Conference League in 2022/2023 for Anderlecht, scoring his only European goal in a 2-1 away win over Slavia Prague.
Similarly to Alderete, Angulo has also played in the Copa Sudamericana for Ecuadorian team LDU de Quito. He made nine appearances and returned three goals and two assists as a teenager.
Brian Brobbey
Brobbey has been a standout performer at the World Cup for the Netherlands.
He’s played for Leipzig in the Champions League and for Ajax in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League — in total, he has eleven Champions League games, twenty two Europa League games and four Conference League appearances to his name. His European debut came as an eighteen-year-old for Ajax against Atalanta in December 2020.
In the old format of the Champions League, Ajax finished third in their group and dropped down to the Europa League, in which they reached the quarter-finals. Brobbey played in every game in the remainder of Ajax’s European campaign that season and scored three goals, including in the quarter-final second leg.
He has since netted a further four times in the Europa League.
Wilson Isidor
In his time at Monaco, Isidor started two games in the Europa League in the 2021/2022 season.
Both of these came against Austrian side Sturm Graz in the group stage. Monaco won one and the other finished in a draw.
Melker Ellborg
Even our backup goalkeeper and derby winner Ellborg has five Europa League and two Champions League qualification appearances to his name, all for Malmo.
His two Champions League appearances were against Georgian outfit Iberia 1999, which the Swedish team won 6-2 on aggregate. His Europa League debut came in October 2025 in a 1-1 draw against Dinamo Zagreb — a game in which Ellborg put in a fine performance, making four saves.
He kept his place for the remainder of the competition and even saved a penalty against Panathinaikos, and this also includes an appearance at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground in their run to the semi-finals of last season’s Europa League; however, Malmo lost 3-0 on the day.
Trai Hume
Before signing for Sunderland when we were still in League One, Hume made five appearances in European qualifying games for Linfield.
One of these was against Lithuanian side Zalgiris Vilnius in the Champions League, although Linfield lost 5-2 on aggregate. His other four were in qualifiers for the Conference League, including an aggregate win against Bosnian side Borac Banja Luke and an aggregate loss to CS Fola Esch from Luxembourg.
Lutscharel Geertruida
Geertruida’s Sunderland future is still up in the air, even though as more time passes it may feel less and less likely that he will sign permanently.
Nevertheless, the Dutch international has already played forty four times in Europe for Feyenoord and Leipzig. Fourteen of these came in the Champions League, eighteen in the Europa League and twelve in the Conference League.
He scored goals in both the Europa League and the Conference League — his Europa League goal came in a win against CSKA Moscow in 2020, and his goal in the Conference League was against Partizan Belgrade in 2022.
That season, Feyenoord reached the final of the Conference League, however ultimately lost against Roma. Geertruida started the final.
Bertrand Traoré
Although Sunderland’s retained list confirmed that Traoré will leave the club over the summer upon the expiry of his contract, the Burkina Faso international has vast experience of continental football and played a total of fifty six matches in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League combined.
These were made for Ajax across two stints, Chelsea, Lyon, İstanbul Başakşehir and Aston Villa. He started the 2016/2017 Europa League final for Ajax against Manchester United, but the Amsterdam giants lost 2-0. Traoré scored four goals and registered four assists on their way to the final that season.
He won’t be a Sunderland player come July, but given that he played for us last season, I will include his stats in the total appearance count which is coming up next.
Squad Totals
If my calculations are correct (however unlikely this may be), Sunderland’s squad that heroically finished in seventh place and qualified for the Europa League have a total of 318 European appearances between them, excluding qualifiers. This is especially impressive given how young some of our squad remains.
Even if we were to lose Xhaka, our squad still has a lot of experience of European football and playing two games a week. Like they did this time last year when preparing for the Premier League, the recruitment team will know what we need to give us the best possible chance of another successful season.
This coming season will provide our fans with an abundance of new experiences and the opportunity to represent our club and city in some exciting places across the continent.
We know that the extra fixtures and travelling might prove challenging, but I have faith that this squad, management and ownership will equip us as best as possible to give it a good go and do us proud in a similar vein to what we have seen for the past couple seasons.
