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

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).