Friday, February 24, 2006

1990 World Cup: Who's Still Playing?



I'm always interested in this sort of thing. The USA had a very young team in 1990 comprised of mostly college kids. Sixteen years later, three players from that squad are still playing professional soccer: Chris Henderson, Kasey Keller, and Tony Meola.

There cannot be more than a handful of players from that tournament that are still active. There were 24 teams of 22 players, so that's 528 total players. Anyone who took part must be 35 years old or greater. It would be cool to see the final player retire, and have a big fuss from the media about it. Because that's the sort of thing that they really don't pay attention to.

Of course, with the lower divisions in soccer, you can keep playing for a long time if you choose. So it's harder to determine. But the guys who are good enough to make the World Cup probably won't hang on way past their prime.

I posted about this last year on Bigsoccer, and I got a few responses. If you can point out anyone that I'm missing, that would be great. Here's a link to the squads.

Active 1990 World Cup Players

Austria-Michael Baur (FC Superfund)
Brazil-Romario (Vasco da Gama)
Costa Rica-Ronald Gonzalez (Saprissa)
Italy-Paolo Maldini (AC Milan), Gianluca Pagliuca (Bologna)
Egypt-Hossam Hassan (Al-Masry)
USA-Chris Henderson (Metrostars), Kasey Keller (Mochengladbach), Tony Meola (Metrostars)

So, that's 9 players I've come up with. I think Geovanny Jara of Costa Rica might still be playing, but I don't know for sure (and for which team). Also, I believe Roberto Nestor Sensini just retired as a player to become the manager of Udinese.

Comments on "1990 World Cup: Who's Still Playing?"

 

Blogger Crew Fan said ... (7:17 AM, February 26, 2006) : 

Interesting stats there. I guess since that was a couple years before I started playing, and four years before the first World Cup that I knew about and watched, that had never occurred to me. Even the '94 players have either recently retired or are likely getting close to that point.

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (12:32 PM, September 09, 2006) : 

Robert Prosinecki is still playing lower league football in Croatia.

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (12:22 AM, January 01, 2010) : 

this is an old post, but I came accross it looking just for this info, as far as I can tell now only Kasey Keller is playing with Maldini having retired at the end of last season, however I also heard Romario was back playing quite recently.

 

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