Today’s World Cup Games, Yesterday’s World Cup Memories

July 1st, 2006 | by: WC Bob |

With a pair of games today featuring some of the planet’s more storied teams, I can’t help to think back to World Cup tournaments gone by. I’m a bit of a sentimentalist that way. With the rapidly expanding use of video on the Internet, it is becoming easier and easier to get my fix. Today, for example, I tracked down the video highlights below of both the 1966 England vs. Portugal semifinal and the 1998 final between Brazil and France.

England vs. Portugal – 1966 World Cup Semifinal

Brazil vs. France – 1998 World Cup Final

I found it interesting to take a look at the players who played in the 1998 final. As you can see there are still a handful of the guys around on both teams today.

Brazil – Taffarel; Cafu, Aldair, Junior Baiano, Roberto Carlos; Leonardo (Denilson, 46th), Cesar Sampaio (Edmundo, 74th), Dunga, Rivaldo; Ronaldo, Bebeto.

France – Fabien Barthez; Lilian Thuram; Frank Leboeuf, Marcel Desailly, Bixente Lizarazu; Christian Karembeu (Alain Boghossian, 57th), Didier Deschamps, Zinedine Zidane, Emmanuel Petit; Youri Djorkaeff (Patrick Vieira, 76th), Stephane Guivarc’h (Christophe Dugarry, 65th).

International Football News – World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://www.worldcupblog.org/world-cup-2006/liveblog-brazil-vs-france.html LiveBlog: Brazil vs. France – FIFA World Cup 2006 – World Cup 2006 Blog

[...] Pre-game: Who do you think will win? France has surprised a lot of folks, getting this far in a tournament with an ‘old’ squad. Probably most French supporters are only now just getting behind their team after their late heroics against Spain. With Zidane enjoying some good touches on the ball, Ribery causing problems out wide, and Henry constantly testing the offside trap (and doing some great acting work on the side), France have shown they can score if you’re not paying attention. [...]