Carney Chukwuemeka’s name was trending all over social media this week.<\/p>\n
Had the Borussia Dortmund midfielder scored a worldie? Maybe he had produced an outrageous piece of skill?<\/p>\n
It was a little bit stranger than that.<\/p>\n
The former Aston Villa and Chelsea midfielder has now made 97 senior appearances across all competitions – but has never played a full 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old made his debut for Villa on the final day of the 2020-21 Premier League season against Tottenham.<\/p>\n
He has started 18 games but always been subbed off. The closest he has got to a full game is the 82nd minute, twice. <\/p>\n
That was in a 4-1 loss for Chelsea at Manchester United in May 2023, and a 1-1 draw for Dortmund at Hamburg in November 2025.<\/p>\n
His other 79 matches have all been from the bench.<\/p>\n
The breakdown of his games is 16 for Villa, 32 for Chelsea and 49 with Dortmund since his move in 2024.<\/p>\n
This should be no slight on the player’s ability, with Dortmund boss Niko Kovac describing him as “sensationally good”. <\/p>\n
“The way he takes the ball and carries it, the way he immediately turns in the direction of play, that is really unique,” Kovac said after a 6-0 win over Union Berlin last year. <\/p>\n
“He has very good acceleration and technique. The boy will give us joy.”<\/p>\n
What does this tell us about the modern game with five substitutes? <\/p>\n
Do any other players come close, or is Chukwuemeka an exception?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carney Chukwuemeka’s name was trending all over social media this week. Had the Borussia Dortmund midfielder scored a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-568401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}