Curated playlist
FIFA World Cup–winning players
- Horst-Dieter HöttgesThe nickname 'Eisenfuß,' iron foot, followed Horst-Dieter Höttges for most of his career as a defender in the West German Bundesliga. Höttges was a sweeper and right-back defined by physical aggression in the tackle rather than by finesse…
- Wolfgang OverathWolfgang Overath was on the pitch in 1974 when West Germany beat the Netherlands 2-1 on home soil and claimed the World Cup. Two other medals already accompanied that one in his collection: a runner-up medal from 1966 and a third-place…
- 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…
- Djalma SantosDjalma Santos did not play a single minute of the 1958 World Cup until the final itself. Brazil's coach had dropped him in favour of a player named De Sordi. Santos watched from the bench as Brazil progressed through the tournament. Then…
- Didier DeschampsDidier Deschamps was once called "the water-carrier" by a former teammate, and it was not a compliment. Eric Cantona, the flamboyant Manchester United star, used the phrase to suggest that Deschamps's only contribution to the French…
- Ronaldo (Brazilian footballer)Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima scored five goals for Cruzeiro in a single game against Bahia on the 7th of November 1993. He was 17 years old. The Brazilian football federation would soon be calling him a prodigy, European clubs would soon…
- Jürgen GrabowskiJürgen Grabowski turned 30 on the 7th of July 1974. That same day, in Munich's Olympic Stadium, he and his Eintracht Frankfurt teammate Bernd Hölzenbein became world champions with West Germany. It was the high point of a career that…
- Philipp LahmPhilipp Lahm scored in the sixth minute of the 2006 FIFA World Cup's opening match, cutting inside the area and launching a right-foot shot into the top-right corner of the net. The venue was Munich. The opponent was Costa Rica. And the…
- 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…
- Helmut RahnHelmut Rahn had six minutes left, and a nation's fragile self-belief riding on his boots. It was the final of the 1954 FIFA World Cup, West Germany against Hungary, and the score stood at 2-2. Rahn received the ball just outside the…
- Nicolás OtamendiNicolás Otamendi was born on the 12th of February 1988 in Buenos Aires, and by the time he lifted the FIFA World Cup in December 2022, he had done something almost no outfield player in the history of the tournament could claim: he had…
- Kylian MbappéKylian Mbappé stood in a stadium of 80,000 people on the 16th of July 2024, wearing the number 9 shirt of Real Madrid. He was 25 years old. Just nine years earlier, he had been a teenager at Monaco's reserve team, brought on by coach…
- Manuel NeuerManuel Neuer made his Bundesliga debut with Schalke 04 on matchday two of the 2006, 07 season. He came on as a substitute for the injured Frank Rost during a 2, 2 draw against Bayern Munich. The twenty-year-old eventually secured the…
- Miroslav KloseMiroslav Klose scored 16 goals in the FIFA World Cup across four tournaments, a record no player has matched. He was born on the 9th of June 1978 in Opole, a Silesian city in Poland, and he arrived in West Germany as an eight-year-old in…
- Sepp MaierSepp Maier spent his entire professional career with one club, making 709 appearances for Bayern Munich across seventeen seasons. He was born Josef Dieter Maier on the 28th of February 1944. He grew up to guard the goal for both Bayern and…
- Thomas MüllerThomas Müller was born on the 13th of September 1989 in Weilheim in Oberbayern, Bavaria, and grew up in the nearby village of Pähl. Fifty kilometres from home, a ten-year-old boy made a journey that would define the next quarter century of…
- 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,…
- Zinedine ZidaneZinedine Zidane scored two goals in the 1998 World Cup Final, both headers, both from corners, in front of the entire world. France beat Brazil 3-0 that night at the Stade de France. More than one million people lined the Champs-Elysees…
- 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…
- Emiliano MartínezEmiliano Martínez stood in goal at the Lusail Stadium on the 18th of December 2022, with the FIFA World Cup final against France locked at 3-3 after extra time. In the seconds before the penalty shootout began, he was already working. He…
- 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,…
- 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…
- GarrinchaGarrincha was born with one leg six centimetres shorter than the other, with his left leg turning outwards and his right turning inwards. A doctor certified him as crippled in childhood. He grew up in Pau Grande, a district of Magé in the…
- Mário ZagalloMário Zagallo was standing on the pitch at the Maracanã Stadium as a young soldier in 1950, watching Uruguay defeat Brazil in one of the most painful moments in his country's football history. He did not play that day. He was there in…
- 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…
- Lukas PodolskiLukas Podolski scored a goal after just nine seconds in May 2013 against Ecuador. Not nine minutes. Nine seconds. It was the fastest goal in the history of the German national team, and the second fastest international goal on earth at…
- 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…
- Gianluigi BuffonGianluigi Buffon was born on the 28th of January 1978 in Carrara, Tuscany, into a family that treated sport as a way of life. His mother was a discus thrower, his father a weightlifter, and both became physical education teachers after…
- Iker CasillasIker Casillas Fernández was born on the 20th of May 1981 in Móstoles, a town in the province of Madrid, to a civil servant and a hairdresser. His father, José Luis, spent his spare time filling out football prediction pools. On one…
- 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…
- 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…
- Enzo FernándezEnzo Jeremías Fernández was born on the 17th of January 2001 in San Martín, Buenos Aires. His father Raúl chose his first name as a tribute to Enzo Francescoli. Francescoli was a Uruguayan who had represented River Plate and won the Copa…
- Fabien BarthezFabien Barthez let a teammate kiss the top of his shaved head before kickoff, a ritual meant to bring good luck to France's goalkeeper. Nicknamed Le Divin Chauve, "The Divine Bald One," Barthez turned that bare scalp into one of the most…
- 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…
- Paul PogbaPaul Labile Pogba was born on the 15th of March 1993 in Lagny-sur-Marne, France, to Guinean parents, and by his early twenties he had become the most expensive footballer on the planet. The number tells the story bluntly: €105 million, the…
- 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…