Friday, May 30, 2008

American Soccer Players who've returned to MLS from Europe

With Brian McBride recently announcing his return to MLS, I wondered which other American players have gone to Europe and then come back to the States to play in Major League Soccer. There's the controversial Landon Donovan return from Germany, the "it was supposed to be triumphant" Claudio Reyna return, and quite a few other "we didn't play much over there" players. Here's the American players currently in the league that have spent some time playing in Europe earlier in their careers.


PlayerCurrentEuropean Club(s)YearAppearances
Wade Barrett HOU

AGF Aarhus

Fredrikstad FK

02-04

2004

31

8

Nat Borchers RSLOdd Grenland 06-0830
Conor CaseyCOL

Hannover 96

Karlsruhe

FSV Mainz

01-02

03-04

04-06

23

30

38

Jimmy Conrad KCLech Poznań 20008
Kenny Cooper DAL

Manchester United Reserves

Oldham Athletic

03-06

2005

N/A

10

Ramiro Corrales SJ

Ham-Kam

Brann

05-06

2007

46

11

Landon Donovan LABayer Leverkusen 99-057
Frankie Hejduk CLB

Bayer Leverkusen

FC St. Gallen

98-02

02-03

19

7

Ian JoyRSL

Manchester United Youth

Tranmere Rovers Youth

Hamburg SV II

FC St. Pauli

95-97

1997

04-05

05-07

N/A

N/A

30

21

Jovan Kirovski SJ

Manchester United Youth

Borussia Dortmund

Sporting Portugal

Crystal Palace

Birmingham City

93-96

96-00

00-01

01-02

02-04

N/A

20

5

36

23

Ben Olsen DCNottingham Forest 00-0118
Ante Razov CHVRacing de Ferrol (Spain) 00-0119
Claudio Reyna NY

Bayer Leverkusen

VfL Wolfsburg

Rangers

Sunderland

Manchester City

94-97

97-99

99-01

01-03

03-07

26

48

64

28

77

Robbie RogersCLBHeerenveen Reserves 06-07N/A
Zach Thornton NYBenfica20040
John ThorringtonCHI

Manchester United Youth

Bayer Leverkusen

Huddersfield Town

Grimsby Town

97-99

99-01

01-03

2004

N/A

0

67

3

Taylor Twellman NE1860 Munich Reserves 00-01N/A
Greg Vanney LABastia02-0565

7 comments:

  1. I missed Thorrington. Thanks tacologic, he's added now.

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  2. Didn't Ian Joy of RSL play for Columbus or something before heading to Europe?

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  3. Ian was with the Crew briefly in 2003 but never saw any action.

    Regardless, I forgot to put him on the list, Thanks hammerfan!

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  4. I can provide a link to the list of all Americans who have played (or are still playing) in the Danish Superliga (since 1991 when it was Founded and replaced the danish 1st Division at the highest league in Denmark) :

    [url]http://www.hvemvandt.dk/arkiv/visudl-land.php?land=USA[/url]

    ...you can click on their names to look at their stats....

    Kampe = games, Mål = goals, Ind = in, Ud = out, Gule = yellow, Røde = red ...
    .

    ReplyDelete
  5. Didnt go too well with the link I see, so I added the link from the post above to the URL box...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for the link Ceres

    ReplyDelete