Introducing the Birmingham Legion Legacy Numbers

Recognizing the players that have made the Three Sparks the team they are today

Since I began covering Birmingham Legion FC earlier this year, I decided to fully invest myself in the task. I want to not just provide the quality-coverage the team deserves, but become an expert on all things Legion.

As part of the process, I’ve spent countless hours digging into the team’s background and history. As a numbers nerd, I’ve been assembling a lot of data about the Three Sparks dating back to their inaugural 2019 campaign.

Today, I want to share one of the projects I’ve been working on: the Birmingham Legion FC Legacy Numbers.

I first became acquainted with the Legacy Numbers concept in 2023, when my favourite club, Tottenham Hotspur, released their own version of the project. They are far from alone in doing so, however. In the USL Championship, both Loudoun United and Detroit City have official Legacy Numbers, and possibly others that I don’t know of.

But Birmingham Legion have yet to conduct their own Legacy Number initiative. And that’s where I come in.

Over the past few months, I have gone over every game Birmingham Legion have played in their seven-year history in order to trace back the involvement of each player. The result? A comprehensive list of all 86 players to have worn the Black and Gold across the club’s 211 competitive games to date, listed in order of appearance.

This list will have a permanent place on my Substack and will be updated as more players make their debuts for as long as I am covering the team, or until the Legion decide to undertake this work in an official capacity.

So without further ado, here are the Birmingham Legion FC Legacy Numbers.

Analysis

Eighty-six players have featured competitively for the Three Sparks since the club’s first game March 10, 2019. Of the 86 names, 25 made their debuts in Legion’s inaugural season, with the following years adding 12 (2020), 6 (2021), 9 (2022), 9 (2023), 15 (2024) and 10 so far in 2025.

Here are some of the most notable insights:

• Debut goalscorers: Marked with an asterisk on the Legacy Numbers list, Birmingham has seen five players score in their very first competitive appearance for the club. Even more remarkable, two of them, JJ Williams [Legacy #21] and Bruno Lapa [#29], actually scored a brace in their first outing for the Three Sparks.

• Debut assists: Goals aren’t the only stats that matter; assists can be just as important. Four players registered an assist on their Legion debuts: Anderson Asiedu [#24], Jonathan Dean [#28], Lapa and Dawson McCartney [#69].

• You read that right. Lapa did not just score a brace on his debut, he also assisted the other goal in Birmingham Legion’s 3-0 win over rivals Memphis 901 on July 15, 2020. Quite a way to introduce yourself to the Magic City faithful for the Brazilian.

• On the other end of the spectrum, eight players picked up a booking in their first-ever appearances in Black and Gold, three of them in the club’s inaugural game. Mikey Lopez [#10], who currently holds the record for most yellow cards as a Legion player, fittingly picked up the very first. The other culprits are, in order, Femi Hollinger-Janzen [#6], Eric Avila [#2], Mathieu Laurent [#19], Jaden Servania [#30], Enzo Martínez [#45], Kobe Hernandez-Foster [#62] and Sebastian Tregarthen [#85].

• As of yet, no Legion player has been sent off on their club debut.

• Twenty-three nations are represented across the 86 players. The club’s most recent debutant, Sam McIllhaton [#86], became the first player from Australia to feature for the Black and Gold.

• The most common origin is, unsurprisingly, the United States. Exactly half the players (43) claim U.S. citizenship as their primary nationality¹. Perhaps more surprising is the country that comes second, Ghana, with six players originating from the West African nation. The six notably include current player Moses Mensah [#53], as well as the club’s first-ever goalscorer and all-time leading appearance maker Prosper Kasim [#8].

• Third-place on the nationality list is a tie between Canada and Brazil. Both are currently on five players, with one each on the 2025 Legion roster (Tyler Pasher [#55] and Lucca Dourado [#80], respectively).

• Other countries with more than one player on the list consist of Jamaica (3), Nigeria (3), Haiti (2), Mexico (2) and Uruguay (2). Fifteen countries have just one player making the list.

• Marcel Appiah is Legacy #1, but, ironically, he is the player from the inaugural starting XI with the least appearances for the club. After starting in that March 2019 game, Appiah did not feature again until June of the same year and departed the club a month later with just three Birmingham appearances to his name.

• Every other player, including substitutes, from Legion’s first-ever match reached at minimum double-digit appearances for the club. Two of them, Kasim (178 appearances) and Lopez (130 appearances), joined the century club before departing Birmingham this past offseason.

• Eight total players are members of the club’s century club, with half of them still on the books. The latter consist of Matt van Oekel [#16], Jake Rufe [#32], Phanuel Kavita [#39] and Martínez.

1. Given that many Legion players never represented their national sides, countries are not necessarily 100% accurate as some players have more than one nationality. When no national caps exist, the country used for the purpose of this research is the one listed on a player’s Transfermarkt profile.