Remarkably, the acquisition of Xherdan Shaqiri from Stoke City takes the Potters’ tally of Champions League winners up to five.
Bizarrely, it means that Stoke don’t now just have more Champions League winners than any of Arsenal, Manchester City or Arsenal, they actually have more than the three Premier League giants combined.
Stoke’s quintet of Champions League winners are Marc Muniesa, who won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2009, Bojan Krkic (Barca in 2009 and 2011), Marko Arnautovic (Inter Milan in 2010) and Ibrahim Afellay (Barcelona in 2011).
New boy Shaqiri is the most recent winner, having lifted the European Cup has part of Jupp Heynckes’s Bayern Munich side who conquered the continent in 2013.
By contrast, Liverpool can call upon only two European champions—Mario Balotelli and Daniel Sturridge—while Arsenal and Manchester City boast only one each, Petr Cech and Yaya Toure respectively.
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We don’t yet have confirmation on whether the Stoke quintet actually wear their winner’s medals to training (we certainly would), but we’ll let you know as soon as we have an update.