Arsenal summer signing left out of Champions League squad | OneFootball

Arsenal summer signing Lucas Nygaard is ineligible for this season’s Champions League due to squad restrictions in the competition.

Lucas Nygaard in training with Arsenal (Photo via Arsenal.com)

With Arsenal set to face Atalanta on Thursday evening, they’ve now submitted their List B for their Champions League squad.

For those who aren’t aware, the Champions League squad system is relatively similar to the Premier League system.

You get 25 senior players on ‘List A’, with a maximum of 17 non-homegrown players, and you can then supplement that with youth players on ‘List B’. Unlike List A, which is fixed for the next few months, List B can be changed before each game.

But unlike the Premier League, which allows unlimited u21 players, there are quite strict UEFA restrictions on eligibility for List B.

Lucas Nygaard in training with Arsenal (Photo via Arsenal.com)

To be on List B, you have to be born on or after 1 January 2003, but you also have to have been eligible to play for the club concerned for an uninterrupted period of two years, or three years with one loan period.

That means that Arsenal’s youth summer signings Tommy Setford and Lucas Nygaard are both ineligible for List B. Arsenal can only include them in their Champions League squad if they name them as senior players, using up one of those 25 senior spots.

The same is true of Brayden Clarke, signed in March, and Ceadach O’Neill, signed in July.

As a reminder, List A can’t be changed during the League Phase, so if a player isn’t included now, and if that player is ineligible for List B, the earliest they could play for Arsenal is the knockout stages.

Lucas Nygaard after breaking his thumb (Photo via Nygaard on Instagram)

With Setford, Arsenal have chosen to include the goalkeeper on List A, so he’s eligible for their Champions League fixtures. But there’s no space for Nygaard, Clarke, and O’Neill as well, so those three have been left out.

In better news for Nygaard, he’s returned to training after his recent injury with a broken thumb. With any luck, he’ll soon get chances to show what he can do with the Arsenal academy.