Rúben Dias on the world's roof

Counts with more than 5100 minutes played, both at the club and the National Team and reached, against V. Setúbal, the 50 official matches with the red jersey in 2018/19. The Benfica’s center-back Rúben Dias is the player with the most appearances in the biggest leagues of the world!

At the age of 21, the footballer trained at Caixa Futebol Campus is today a certainty of the Portuguese football, as evidenced by his appearances at the National Team. In this current season he already played eight matches with the “lusos”, was always a starter and only missed the 90 minutes in the friendly against Scotland.

A bet during the 2017/18 season, Rúben Dias already overcome the 30 games of his debut season. In the current season he was always a starter (never substituted) and was only benched against Montalegre, for the Portuguese Cup. In total, the 50 matches are divided by these competitions: 28 in the Liga NOS, 9 in the Champions League, 5 in the Europa League, 5 in the Portuguese Cup and 3 in the League Cup.

Defenders: full steam ahead

On the list of footballers with the most appearances in 2018/19 presented by Transfermarket, four of the five first positioned are center-backs. Nevertheless, when limiting the search to the 15 European main Leagues, the keepers joint the defenders in what concerns to minutes.

Among the defenders (center-backs) are Daley Blind y De Ligt (Ajax), Alderweireld (Tottenham) y Van Dijk (Liverpool); among the goalkeepers we have Onana (Ajax), Ederson (Manchester City), Kepa (Chelsea) and Alisson (Liverpool).

The 15 with the most appearances in Europe's top leagues

Text: Marco Rebelo

Pics: Archive / SL Benfica