Curated playlist
Expatriate men's soccer players in the United States
- Lionel MessiLionel Andrés Messi was born on the 24th of June 1987 in Rosario, a city in the Santa Fe Province of Argentina. By the time he was ten years old, doctors had told his family he would stop growing. His body could not produce enough growth…
- Gerd MüllerGerd Müller scored 68 goals in 62 international appearances for West Germany. That is not a misprint. Most top-level strikers celebrate if they average a goal every two games. Müller averaged more than one per game, across an entire…
- 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…
- PeléEdson Arantes do Nascimento was born on the 23rd of October 1940 in Três Corações, Minas Gerais, Brazil, and he died on the 29th of December 2022 at the age of 82. The world knew him by one word: Pelé. He won three FIFA World Cup titles,…
- EusébioEusébio da Silva Ferreira grew up barefoot in the Mafalala neighbourhood of Lourenço Marques, kicking balls made of socks stuffed with newspapers rolled into spheres. By the time he walked off a Wembley pitch in 1966, tears streaming down…
- RomárioRomário de Souza Faria was born on the 29th of January 1966 in Rio de Janeiro, and by the time he retired, the debate over whether he was the greatest striker who ever lived had drawn in some of the most celebrated players and coaches in…
- Jürgen KlinsmannJürgen Klinsmann scored sixteen goals in a single football match at the age of eight. He was playing for an amateur club in the small town of Gingen an der Fils. Football was still years away from becoming his profession. That boy from…
- James RodríguezJames David Rodríguez Rubio was born on the 12th of July 1991 in Cúcuta, Norte de Santander, and grew up in the city of Ibagué, Tolima. He made his professional debut on the 21st of May 2006 at the age of 14, becoming the second youngest…
- Franz BeckenbauerFranz Beckenbauer lifted the World Cup trophy as a captain in 1974, then lifted it again as a manager in 1990. Only two other men in football history, Brazil's Mario Zagallo and France's Didier Deschamps, have ever done the same. The fans…
- Hristo StoichkovHristo Stoichkov was born on the 8th of February 1966 in Plovdiv, a city in southern Bulgaria, and he would grow up to be named by Pele himself as one of the hundred greatest living footballers on earth. That honor came in 2004, a decade…
- 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…
- 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…
- Rafael MárquezRafael Márquez Álvarez was born on the 13th of February 1979 in Mexico, and by the time he finished playing, he had done something no defender in the world had ever done before: appeared at five separate FIFA World Cups as captain. That is…
- VaváVavá scored in two consecutive World Cup finals, a feat no other footballer managed for sixty years. Born Edvaldo Izidio Neto on the 12th of November 1934, he grew up to become one of the most feared strikers of his generation. He carried…