Curated playlist
Serie A players
- 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…
- Luka ModrićLuka Modrić scored the only goal against Chelsea on the 21st of March 2009, a composed finish that silenced those who had called him a lightweight unfit for English football. He was just twenty-three, playing out of position, still…
- 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…
- Cristiano RonaldoCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on the 5th of February 1985 in the São Pedro parish of Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira. His mother, a cook and cleaning woman, wanted to abort him. Her doctor refused.…
- 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…
- 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,…
- 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…
- 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…
- Diego ForlánDiego Forlán Corazo was born on the 19th of May 1979 in the Carrasco neighborhood of Montevideo, Uruguay. His family history is deeply rooted in professional football. His father Pablo played for Peñarol and São Paulo while representing…
- 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…
- Salvatore SchillaciSalvatore Schillaci was born on the 1st of December 1964 in Palermo, Italy. He grew up in a poor family within that Sicilian city. His first steps into football began with Amat Palermo, an amateur team run by the local bus company. This…
- Gabriel BatistutaGabriel Omar Batistuta was born on the 1st of February 1969 in the Argentine town of Avellaneda, to a slaughterhouse worker and a school secretary. He grew up in the nearby city of Reconquista, where football was not even his first sport.…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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 ScifoEnzo Scifo was eighteen years old, and one hundred fifteen days, at the 1984 European Championship. He had just helped Belgium beat Yugoslavia 2-0 in the tournament's opening match. That made him the youngest player yet to appear in the…
- Guillermo StábileGuillermo Stábile arrived at the 1930 FIFA World Cup as a last-minute replacement, stepping onto the pitch only because the first-choice striker suffered an anxiety attack before kick-off. By the time the tournament ended, he had scored…
- 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…
- 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…