Analysis: young and old

I'm splitting my pre-tournament analysis into topics this time. This first one is about youth and experience. Incidentally, the word analysis was constructed from the ancient Greek for unloosening. For fuck's sake, why? Some Enlightenment intellectual made that up. What were they thinking?


The youngest player at the World Cup is Cameroon's Fabrice Olinga, born on May 12 1996. England continue their tradition of picking one really young player with Luke Shaw, who will be 19 on the day of the third place playoffs.

The oldest, as usual, is a goalkeeper. This time the honour goes to Faryd Mondragon of Colombia, 43 during the tournament.

The most capped player is a keeper as well, Iker Casillas of Spain, with 153 caps. 34 players have 100 caps or more, which tells its own story about the ubiquity of international football in the modern era. 13 players have no caps yet, of whom the best known in this country is probably David de Gea. Given that he's competing for a game with Casillas and Pepe Reina he may not rate his chances of losing his cherry that highly, but he must be pleased to be there given that Victor Valdez would have gone if he hadn't been injured.

The oldest uncapped player is 32 year old Rodrigo Munoz of Uruguay, who may well feel that this is his last opportunity. The youngest player with 100 caps is Andres Guardado of Mexico, with 104 caps at the age of 27. That really is some going, although it must be said that even by modern standards Mexico play a lot of games. He's been playing in Europe most of that time, and must have more air miles than Kylie Minogue.

The youngest country is Ghana, at 24.9 years on average, which means many of them won't have been there for the Uruguay game last time. Argentina are the oldest, at 28.5. Surprisingly, both countries are about average for caps.

Spain are the most capped by some margin, their average of 59.3 caps being 10 caps ahead of second placed Uruguay. Which I guess tells us that success succeeds. The least capped side is Australia, who are clearly going for a clean slate.

So some are older than others, and most of them have done it before. Thanks for that, I'm sure you're saying. Is there much more of this? I'm afraid so. Next time, club and country.