9 CURRENT DAY PLAYERS WE CAN’T BELIEVE WERE AT THE 2010 WORLD CUP: WOOD, ERIKSEN….

We all know that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. They’d each already won the Ballon d’Or and were two of the biggest stars of the tournament.

Andres Iniesta, who scored the iconic match-winner for Spain in the final, has recently announced his retirement and there aren’t many left from that tournament still playing today. Names like Steven Gerrard, Carles Puyol, Deco, Thierry Henry, Tim Cahill and Kaka belong to another era entirely.

But there are a fair few players who have demonstrated their remarkable longevity and are still going today, a decade and a half later. Here are nine players we can’t believe went to the 2010 World Cup:

Chris Wood

“Still active” would be doing a massive disservice to Chris Wood in 2025.

The striker isn’t winding down his career in some footballing backwater. He’s actually peaking at the age of 33, spearheading Nottingham Forest’s surprise Champions League charge with a career-best 17 Premier League goals (and counting). Ridiculous.

Did you know, seven years before he became an established top-flight player at Burnley, Wood went to the World Cup as a teenager in New Zealand’s squad? Subsequent years saw him turn out for Barnsley, Brighton, Birmingham, Bristol City, Millwall, Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Leeds United in the second and third tiers before the move to Turf Moor.

Out in South Africa, he actually came close to a famous late winner against the holders Italy and appeared off the bench in all three of the Kiwis’ group stage draws. Fun fact: New Zealand were the only unbeaten team at the 2010 World Cup.

Wood’s never appeared in a World Cup since, but at least he can say he’s invincible on the biggest international stage of them all.

Christian Eriksen

The youngest player at the 2010 World Cup, Eriksen was called up by Denmark following his breakthrough season at Ajax as an 18-year-old.

At that point he’d only played in a handful of friendlies on the international stage, but he made it off the bench in South Africa in Denmark’s group stage defeats to the Netherlands and Japan.

The playmaker continued developing his skills in the Eredivisie for another three years before his big move to Tottenham. He’s also gone on to become an almost ever-present for Denmark for the best part of 15 years, their all-time most capped player who’s represented them at six major tournaments.

Xherdan Shaqiri

We all came to know and love Der Kraftwurfe – the Powercube – from his time at Bayern, Inter, Stoke and Liverpool, but back in 2010 he was something of an unknown quantity at Basel.

Shaqiri received the first of his 125 caps for Switzerland in 2010 and was a surprise inclusion in Ottmar Hitzfeld’s squad. He watched on from the bench in their shock victory over Spain but was a late substitute against Honduras, a goalless draw that sealed their group-stage elimination.

Nowadays the 33-year-old is back where it all began, at Basel. He’s notched six goals and 11 assists in 17 Swiss Super League appearances, playing a starring role in his boyhood club’s title challenge.

Andre Ayew

Watchers of the Premier League came to know the midfielder – son of Ghana legend Abedi “Pele” Ayew, older brother of Jordan – from his stints with Swansea City and West Ham in the mid-2010s.

But long before that he was an exciting prospect who made his debut for club and country – Marseille and Ghana – way back in 2007.

Ayew was an ever-present for the Black Stars in their run to the AFCON final, where they were defeated by Egypt, earlier in 2010. And he shone on African soil once again at the World Cup, assisting Asamoah Gyan’s extra-time winner against the United States while serving a yellow card suspension for the infamous quarter-final penalty shootout defeat to Uruguay.

After that weird stint at Nottingham Forest (remember that? Us neither), the 35-year-old is back in Ligue 1 with Le Havre.

 READ: 7 players from the Barclays era Premier League we can’t believe are still playing in 2024

Nicolas Otamendi

The grizzled centre-back belongs to the same generation as Lionel Messi and Angel Di Maria, who finally tasted double Copa America and World Cup glory in their twilight years following well over a decade of international heartbreak.

Messi was already footballing royalty in 2010, while that summer Real Madrid signed rising star Di Maria from Benfica. But Otamendi was far from a household name; he was still in his home country with Velez Sarsfield when Diego Maradona took him on the plane to South Africa.

As a youngster he started in Argentina’s victories over Greece and Mexico, as well as the humbling 4-0 defeat to Germany in the quarter-finals. The following month he signed for Porto, kicking off 15 years in the European club game packed with silverware.

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TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every member of England’s 2010 World Cup squad?

Thomas Muller

Bayern Munich’s “Raumdeuter” (space interpreter) was just starting to make a name for himself as one of Europe’s hottest young prospects back in 2010.

Just 20 years old then, Muller went to the World Cup off the back of scoring 13 Bundesliga goals in his breakthrough season at Bayern, in which they won the domestic double under Louis Van Gaal – denied a historic treble by Jose Mourinho’s Inter in the Champions League final. He started that night at the Bernabeu up top alongside Ivica Olic.

One of the leading lights of a tremendously exciting German generation that peaked lifting the World Cup four years later, Muller was undoubtedly one of the stars of South Africa – having notched five goals and three assists en route to their third-place finish.

He’s now retired from the international game but remains a more than useful player for Vincent Kompany’s Bayern at the age of 35. Just the 12 Bundesliga titles under his belt.

Raul Albiol

Like Muller, Otamendi and Wood, Albiol is another still playing at a high level in a top European league after transcending eras.

The centre-back turns 40 later this year, but he still starts most weeks for a Villarreal side chasing Champions League qualification in La Liga.

Albiol made his debut for La Roja way back in 2007 and was part of the squad that won Euro 2008, the World Cup and Euro 2012.

He didn’t actually play a single minute in South Africa, serving as a back-up in Vicente del Bosque’s wealth of defensive options.

QUIZ: Can you name Spain’s XI from their World Cup final win v Netherlands?

Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting

Cameroon’s 2010 squad was full of familiar faces, from Joel Matip to Vincent Aboubakar.

But we can’t look past Choupo-Moting for our entry here. The striker was still with first club Hamburger SV back then, while subsequent years would see him represent Mainz, Schalke and Stoke City before his wonderfully unexpected late-career Indian summer at PSG and Bayern Munich.

He’s just signed for MLS outfit New York Red Bulls for the upcoming 2025 campaign.

Alexis Sanchez

Like Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney or Theo Walcott, it’s really no wonder that Sanchez hasn’t stayed at the top of his game deep into his thirties, although he is still going today back at Udinese.

Part of Marcelo Bielsa’s rip-roaring Chile side, Sanchez had made his international debut back in 2006 and already had four seasons of club football (with Udinese, Colo-Colo and River Plate) under his belt by the time he went to South Africa as a 21-year-old.

From this point onwards he’d barely have a summer off between further World Cups, Copa America (which he won twice) and the Confederations Cup. He was only 29 when Manchester United signed him in 2018 but the minutes in his legs told a different story.

“Taking on Marcelo Bielsa is important to me, I learned a lot from him and it is because of him that I am who I am,” Sanchez later said of his time working under El Loco.

“What I remember the most about Bielsa was the mentality that he tries his players to have.”

2025-02-04T08:26:24Z