Curated playlist
1982 FIFA World Cup players
- Grzegorz LatoGrzegorz Lato arrived at Stal Mielec as a teenager in 1966, a boy from Malbork joining a club stuck in the Second Division. Few people in Poland could have predicted what came next. Over the following decade, Lato would drag that…
- Władysław ŻmudaWładysław Żmuda was born on the 6th of June 1954 in Lublin. He spent six years learning his trade with his first club Motor Lublin before finally spreading his wings in 1973 and switching to Gwardia Warsaw. The nineteen-year-old Żmuda was…
- Diego MaradonaDiego Armando Maradona was born on the 30th of October 1960 in a polyclinic hospital in Lanús, Buenos Aires Province, and raised in Villa Fiorito, a shantytown on the southern outskirts of the city. He died on the 25th of November 2020,…
- Paolo RossiPaolo Rossi was born on the 23rd of September 1956 in Prato, Tuscany, in the area of Santa Lucia. Twenty-six years later, he stood at the centre of one of the most improbable recoveries in World Cup history. The question that summer in…
- Manuel AmorosManuel Amoros was born on the 1st of February 1962, in Nîmes, in the Gard department of southern France. His parents were Spanish, and they had left Spain to escape the regime of Francisco Franco. The boy grew up to wear the shirt of some…
- Franco BaresiFranco Baresi made his Serie A debut on the 23rd of April 1978, stepping onto the pitch for AC Milan at age 17. He had arrived at the club only because Inter Milan turned him away, choosing his older brother Giuseppe instead. What followed…
- Lothar MatthäusLothar Matthäus was born on the 21st of March 1961 in Erlangen, Bavaria, to a father who had fled across the Oder River in 1944 ahead of the Soviet advance. That backstory of escape and reinvention threads quietly through everything that…
- Michel PlatiniMichel Platini scored nine goals in five matches at the 1984 European Championship, a record that stood for 37 years. That tournament, played on home soil in France, became the defining image of a career built on intelligence rather than…
- Teófilo CubillasTeófilo Cubillas was born on the 8th of March 1949, in Peru, and by the time he was 20 years old, Pelé himself had declared him his successor. That is not a small thing. Pelé, still active and at the height of his powers after winning the…
- Antonio CabriniAntonio Cabrini stepped onto the pitch for his country's opening match of the 1978 FIFA World Cup without a single senior international cap to his name. He had been called into Italy's squad of twenty despite being entirely uncapped at…
- Mario KempesIn the 105th minute of the 1978 World Cup final, Mario Kempes scored the game-winning goal against the Netherlands. He had entered that match as the only foreign-based player César Luis Menotti had selected for the entire tournament. By…