{"id":164450,"date":"2026-03-15T22:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T22:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/164450\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T22:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T22:04:07","slug":"why-a-16-year-old-could-play-for-bayern-munich-in-a-key-ucl-game-nbc-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/164450\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a 16-year-old could play for Bayern Munich in a key UCL game \u2013 NBC New York"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An unlikely run of injuries has sidelined\u00a0Bayern Munich&#8217;s\u00a0top three goalkeepers and could mean the German champion starts New York-born 16-year-old Leonard Prescott for its upcoming\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnewyork.com\/tag\/champions-league\/\" data-type=\"post_tag\" data-id=\"14584\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Champions League<\/a>\u00a0game against Atalanta.<\/p>\n<p>With first-choice Manuel Neuer recovering from a\u00a0calf muscle tear, Prescott was on the bench in the Champions League last week as\u00a0Bayern beat Atalanta 6-1\u00a0in the first leg of their round-of-16 encounter.<\/p>\n<p>At the time it seemed mostly like a chance to familiarize a promising young player, who starts for the Bayern under-19 team, with a more professional environment.<\/p>\n<p>Prescott was born in New York but started his playing career at Union Berlin before a 2023 move to Bayern\u2019s academy. He has also played for the German under-17 national team.<\/p>\n<p>Prescott has suddenly become a possible starter after Jonas Urbig was concussed in a collision in the final minute of the game. Backup Sven Ulreich tore his right adductor in Saturday&#8217;s 1-1 draw at Bayer Leverkusen but stayed on the field. He will be \u201csidelined for the time being,\u201d Bayern said Sunday, after he was examined following the game.<\/p>\n<p>If Neuer or the others can&#8217;t recover in time, that could leave Prescott as Bayern&#8217;s starter against Atalanta on Wednesday after he was also the backup for Ulreich on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Among the other goalkeepers under contract to Bayern, reserve-team goalkeeper Leon Klanac has been injured since December and Daniel Peretz is on loan at Southampton.<\/p>\n<p>One other option besides Prescott might be the 19-year-old Jannis B\u00e4rtl, who has played reserve games since Klanac&#8217;s injury and was on the bench for two Bundesliga games this season.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRoger Bennett previewed his new book \u201cWe Are The World (Cup),\u201d talked about on his favorite World Cup memories and predicted the world champion.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unlikely run of injuries has sidelined\u00a0Bayern Munich&#8217;s\u00a0top three goalkeepers and could mean the German champion starts New&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[35297,9,11,10,400],"class_list":["post-164450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-champions-league","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}