Young At Heart: Football’s Oldest Players
Football is a vocation of the young, but this judgment is not always true. The history of sports knows many people who entered the field at a mature age.
Claudio Pizarro (Peru)
If you were to ask English fans what they thought of Claudio Pizarro, they would probably say that he was an average player judging by his performances in a Chelsea London shirt. They would probably be right because his time at Stamford Bridge from 2007 to 2009 was the worst period of his career. In two seasons he played only 32 games and scored two goals.
However, if you were to ask German fans (and especially fans of Bayern and Werder Bremen) the same question, they would talk about the Peruvian forward in superlative terms. It was with those clubs that he shone before leaving for the islands, and when he returned home after a disappointing English series, he regained his former form at Bremen. When he retired last year at the age of 41, he had 197 goals in 487 games, making him the sixth top scorer in Bundesliga history.
Analysts in India also pay attention to horse racing. Indian horse racing tips confirm that there are also many adult athletes in this sport.
Rivaldo (Brazil)
Rivaldo’s football career lasted an incredible 24 years and is reminiscent of the fairytale story of how a malnourished and hungry boy from a poor favela in the city of Recife came to fame. At the turn of the millennium, Rivaldo was one of the best and most respected players in the world, and many of today’s stars speak of him as their role model.
He played for 14 clubs on four continents during his football life. He last played for Brazilian third division club Mogi Mirim. He announced his retirement shortly after playing on the field with his son Rivaldinho.
Rivaldo will forever be remembered in history as the 2002 World Champion and 1999 Ballon d’Or winner. He will also leave an indelible mark on the history of FC Barcelona, with whom he won the Spanish championship twice. He has played 74 games in the yellow and blue Brazilian national team uniform, scoring an impressive 34 goals.
Edwin van der Sar (Netherlands)
Since Peter Schmeichel left Manchester United there have been eleven different goalkeeper replacements. In 2005, however, Dutchman Edwin van der Sar arrived for £2 million from Fulham and booked his place in goal. After spending six seasons at Old Trafford, the Dutch goalkeeper bid farewell to fans in 2011 at the age of 40 as a club legend. With the Red Devils, he won the English title four times and the Champions League once. He did it twice in his career – the first time in the shirt of Ajax Amsterdam.
In Holland, there is little doubt that Van der Sar is the best goalkeeper in the country. To this day, he holds the record for “dry” matches in the national team. Of the 130 matches in which he has played, he has done so on 71 occasions. Between 2008 and 2009, he broke Petr Cech’s record for the most minutes without a goal conceded in league games. His goalless streak lasted 1,311 minutes, and so far no one in the Premier League has surpassed it.
Roger Milla (Cameroon)
Most football players experience their moments of greatest glory before they turn 30. Cameroonian striker Roger Milla didn’t enjoy them for 38 years until the World Cup in Italy. He became perhaps the first ever star of African football on the international stage.
Milla stunned the world at the 1990 World Cup. The player, who had already retired from football, went to Italy only because the country’s president asked him to. He scored four goals in the tournament and performed an unforgettable celebratory dance at the corner flag. He scored two goals for Romania and two in extra time against Colombia in the 1/8 finals. At the time, reaching the quarterfinals was the best result for an African team in World Cup history.
And it could have been even better. Then Cameroon fell just seven minutes short of the semifinals. In the 83rd minute, England tied the score at 2-2 on penalties, and the match went into extra time, in which the island team again added the winning goal on penalties. Milla, however, was a championship hero, a player who towered over teammates and opponents a decade or younger. If ever there was a momentum that sparked the rapid development of football on the African continent, it was created by Roger Milla in Italy in 1990.
Six years after the World Cup, he was still playing football, and he participated in the 1994 World Cup at the age of 42. He became the oldest player ever to play in the tournament, and his record was broken only twenty years later at the championship in Brazil by Farid Mondragon.
Stuart Pearce (England)
Longtime England defender Stuart Pearce spent the last season of his long career with Manchester City, for which he scored his last goal in 2000. He was 38 years and 216 days old. Although he only enjoyed goals from his teammates after that, he played two more years in the Premier League.
Because of his frequent “outbursts” and violent techniques bordering on brutality, he earned the nickname “Psycho.” In his biography, his former teammate Matt Le Tissier called him “the scariest opponent.” Although many rivals prayed for years that he would retire from soccer, Pierce didn’t retire until he was 40.
Dino Zoff (Italy)
Anyone who has ever seen Dino Zoff catch a ball should be impressed. He is undoubtedly one of the best goalkeepers ever to stand on goal. He holds many records in Italian and world football. For example, he is still the oldest player to win a world title. In 1982 he lifted the most valuable trophy over his head as 40-year-old captain of the winning team at the World Cup in Spain.
Dzoff was a major player for the national team for ten years and was arguably the biggest star of Italian football in his time. Despite his average height, he was very fast and lightning-quick after every saves. Dino was a reliable goalkeeper who gave the team confidence and composure even in the tensest moments of the match. He always held back and didn’t flaunt his performance, partly out of innate modesty, partly out of respect for his opponent.
Teddy Sheringham (England)
The oldest player ever to play in the English Premier League is striker Teddy Sheringham. Sheringham has been a regular part of the England squad for nine years since 1993, scoring 11 goals in 51 games.
His best years were with Tottenham Hotspur (1992 to 1997 and 2001 to 2003) and Manchester United (1997 to 2001). On December 26, 2006, at the age of 40 years and 268 days, he became the oldest scorer in the Premier League. His goal decided West Ham United’s 2-1 victory over Portsmouth.
Javier Zanetti (Argentina)
When he was still running around on the turf at the age of 40, he was said to be in as much physical shape as players a decade younger. Javier Zanetti played his first adult game for Talleres in 1991, from where he moved to Inter Milan via Banfield, where he played from 1995 to 2014.
During that time at the club, he played 858 matches in Serie A or domestic and European Cups, scoring 21 goals. Add to that 145 matches for the Argentine national team and you get an incredible figure. Zanetti has won the Italian championship five times, won the domestic Cup and the Super Cup four times, and also has one Champions League, UEFA Cup, and Club World Cup title each.
Francesco Totti (Italy)
Italian football player Francesco Totti is synonymous with sports dedication. He was a Roma player from 1992 until his career ended in 2017. Totti is the oldest scorer in Champions League history, and in the spring of 2017, he became the longest-serving player at one club among all active players in the world. He spent 25 seasons with Roma.
Totti’s list of football accomplishments includes, in addition to the 2006 World Cup gold, the 1996 European Under-21 Championship title, a triumph in Serie A in 2001, two wins at the Copa Italia, and numerous individual honors. Among others, he finished fifth in the 2001 Ballon d’Or poll and was the top Italian player in Serie A five times. At Euro 2000 he was named best player of the final match and was included in the championship’s All-Star team.
Paolo Maldini (Italy)
Paolo Maldini has become a symbol of loyalty to the club. In all 25 seasons he spent in professional football, he wore a Milan jersey. He bid farewell to his career in 2009 at the age of 41, becoming a club legend.
Maldini had tremendous leadership qualities. That is why he was nicknamed “El Capitano”. In addition to his technical feats, he was recognized for his perfect positional play, great vision, and intuition which always put him in the right place at the right time.
In addition to the 1994 world title, Maldini is also the 2000 European vice-champion and has won the Italian championship seven times and the Champions League five times. He finished third in the Ballon d’Or poll in 1994 and was in the same position nine years later. In 2007, when he was 39 years old, he was the best defender in the Champions League.
Romário (Brazil)
The career of Brazilian striker Romario is full of great successes. A fine footballer and graduate of Vasco da Gama, he went to Europe in 1988, where he became famous in the shirt of Eindhoven, with which he won the championship three times. He scored 96 goals in 107 league games for the Dutch club and earned the right to move to Barcelona, where he was engaged by then coach Johan Cruyff. Upon his arrival, he confidently declared that he would score thirty goals in his debut season in the league at Camp Nou, and he succeeded. It took him 33 games to do so, and he became the Spanish champion at the end of the 1993/94 season. Romario scored five hat-tricks for Barça, including one against Real Madrid.
However, his association with the Catalan club did not end too well. After a disagreement with the coach he left Barcelona in January 1995 and went back to South America. By that time he could already boast a world title, which helped win the Canaries in the United States. That same year he won the Golden Ball as the best football player on the planet.
After leaving the Iberian Peninsula, Romario returned to Europe for only two occasional appearances for Valencia, but the rest of the time he was at home and played three matches in Qatar. At the age of 40, he played in Major League Football in America and became one of the biggest stars of the competition in a Miami jersey. Even in his old age, he performed admirably and scored goal after goal. He scored 19 goals in 25 league games. He played his last game for the Brazilian team America when he was 43 years old.
Ryan Giggs (Wales)
Ryan Giggs probably needs no introduction. He was a reigning Premier League legend until the end of the 2013/14 season. He had played in the competition since its inception in 1992 and played 632 league games in a Manchester United shirt, to which he remained faithful for the rest of his career. Had the Premier League been formed two years earlier, he would have had forty more games.
But Giggs holds the record not only for the number of games played. He also holds the record for the most league titles won (13), played the most games at one club (632), and played the most seasons (22).
