World Cup final survivors

[G-Man]

LAST UPDATE: 8 January 2024

When Martin Peters died, I looked up how many of the World Cup final starting XIs had died. The longest-serving World Cup champion [was] 1954's Horst Eckel, the only survivor of that final. The oldest still-intact World Cup final team is now West-Germany's 1982 side.

I'll try to keep this thread as a reference point for future (unwelcome) updates.

Unless there have been deaths I have missed, the number of deaths in the World Cup final starting line-ups:

1954: 22 (11 Hungary - 11 West-Germany)
1958: 22 (11 Sweden - 11 Brazil)
1962: 20 (10 Brazil - 10 Czechoslovakia)
1966: 16 (10 English - 6 West-Germany)
1970: 9 (4 Brazil: Felix, Carlos Alberto, Everaldo, Pelé -- 5 Italy: Rosato, Facchetti, Burgnich, Riva plus sub Juliano)
1974: 9 (4 West-Germany: Müller, Grabowski, Beckenbauer, Hölzenbein -- 5 Netherlands: Cruyff, Suurbier, Rensenbrink, Jansen, Jongbloed)
1978: 6 (2 Argentina: Luque, plus sub Houseman -- 5 Netherlands: Rensenbrink, Jansen, Jongbloed, plus subs and Nanninga, Suurbier)
1982: 2 (both Italy: Scirea, Rossi)
1986: 5 (3 Argentina: Cuciuffo, Brown, Maradona -- 2 West-Germany: Eder, Brehme)
1990: 2 (1 West Germany: Brehme --1Argentina: Maradona)
1994: and thereafter: 0

The survivors of 1962 are: Amarildo -- Josef Jelinek
The survivors of 1966 are: Geoff Hurst -- Willi Schulz, Wolfgang Weber, Karl-Heinz Schnellinger, Wolfgang Overath, Siegfried Held

[treibeis]

Morbid fucker, you.

That 1974 statistic is going to keep me awake tonight. The youngest participant - I'm not looking it up - was maybe Hoeneß, and he's nearly 70.

[Gangster Octopus]

Didn't we do this before? Not that we should stop this one.

[torres]

Didn't Robbie Rensenbrink die just recently?

[treibeis]

Didn't we do this before? Not that we should stop this one.

It's what G-Man does. "Hey, that HSV team in the pink shirts: Keegan's not dead, Nogly's not dead, Magath's alive and kicking, Hrubesch is still with us...."

It keeps him occupied. Otherwise he'd be out keying his neighbours' cars and God knows what else.

[jwdd27]

Didn't Robbie Rensenbrink die just recently?

Yes, in January.. 1974 =2 1978=1.

So we OTF hearse chasers must wait for 1990 to break its duck. Could be a long wait, Augenthaler was the oldest, but was only 32 then (and 62 now, obvs). But he was the only one born in the 1950s, lots of young 'uns, although all that coke might do for Maradona's heart before much longer.

[G-Man]

Shit, I missed Rensenbrink's death. I was watching he 1978 World Cup film just two days ago, and was thinking, "That Rensenbrink was a hell of a player."

Didn't we do this before? Not that we should stop this one.

Yeah, I carried this over from the Martin Peters thread.

[Jah Womble]

Rensenbrink’s death had completely passed me by too. How very sad.

And treibeis, don’t knock it - there’s a book in there for somebody. (Winky thing.)

[Satchmo Distel]

It is still somewhat shocking that Cruyff was the first 1974 finalist to die given that he and Beckenbauer were the two best footballers of the era (and badly missed by their teams in 1978) but he obviously had some health issues that caught up with him, particularly the smoking. Can anyone recommend a good Cruyff biography or essay?

If we extend the criteria to a tournament's outstanding players, Socrates is a big outlier for 80s survival. Scirea is exceptional because he died in a car crash (Wiki suggests it was the explosion of gasoline being carried by the truck with which they collided that killed him).

[Jah Womble]

The 1978 World Cup was somewhat ill-fated, since Brazil’s Dirceu and Poland’s Deyna also perished in car crashes. (Scirea and Deyna died just two days apart.)

[Satchmo Distel]

I hadn't realized these facts about Dirceu (Wiki):

He played for Brazil at the 1974, 1978, and 1982 FIFA World Cups. He was due to go to the 1986 edition of the tournament, but was ruled out by injury. He played 11 games and scored three goals in his World Cup appearances. Brazil finished fourth in 1974, while in 1978, he won the Bronze Ball and was named to the team of the tournament after helping Brazil to a third-place finish. He also took part at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games with Brazil.

[longeared]

Double entry for this thread over the weekend. Jack Charlton (England 1966) we've seen, but Wim Suurbier has also died. Suurbier started for the Netherlands in 1974 and came on as a sub in 1978.

[Jah Womble]

Yep, G-Man needs to update the OP - and correct the 'math' for 1966.

[G-Man]

G-Man has reported for duty and effected the alterations as instructed, Capt'n Sir!

[Jah Womble]

Good work, that (G-)man!

So, not one WC finalist over the past three decades has yet perished? (I mean, that's good to know, but perhaps surprising...)

[1974ddr]

Double entry for this thread over the weekend. Jack Charlton (England 1966) we've seen, but Wim Suurbier has also died. Suurbier started for the Netherlands in 1974 and came on as a sub in 1978.

I'd missed that. Great player, Suurbier.

[Satchmo Distel]

How many players across all 24 Italia 90 sides have died? Escobar is the one that sprang immediately to mind. Among coaches, Charlton joins Bobby Robson, but Venglos is still around at 84.

[3 Colours Red]

How many players across all 24 Italia 90 sides have died?

There's a couple from Cameroon - Benjamin Massing passed away in 2017, Louis-Paul M'Fede in 2013. Romania's Michael Klein died just three years after the tournament.

[Satchmo Distel]

I think Vicini's death in 2018 has left Luis Suarez as the eldest surviving coach from 1990.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cate...d_Cup_managers

[longeared]

Klas Ingesson was in the Panini album and pretty sure he was in the Swedish squad. One of the South Koreans died fairly recently.

[Last Years Man]

Double entry for this thread over the weekend. Jack Charlton (England 1966) we've seen, but Wim Suurbier has also died. Suurbier started for the Netherlands in 1974 and came on as a sub in 1978.

Sorry to hear another Dutch legend has passed away. There's now only 3 of the starting line-up from Ajax's 1st European Cup win in 1971 still alive. 5 of them have died in the last 7 years.

[Satchmo Distel]

Heavy smokers?

[ursus arctos]

Stuy - still living
Vasovic - heart attack at 62
Suurbier - stroke at 75
Hulshoff - "after a short illness" at 73
Rijnders - never fully recovered after collapsing on the pitch while playing for Club Brugge and died at 29
Neeskens - still living
Swart - still living
Muhren - cancer of the bone marrow at 67
van Dijk - acute endocarditis at 51
Kiezer - lung cancer at 73
Cruyff - lung cancer at 68

Smoking clearly was a factor for Kiezer and Cruyff, but while that team (and Dutch players of the time in general) were not known for "clean living", there is a good deal of rotten luck in that list.

[Jah Womble]

Details of the last World Cup final survivors between 1930 and 1954 here (as of 2018):

https://ovalmauls.wordpress.com/2018...final-1930-54/

There was probably a thread at the time (I was off-piste in 2010), but kind of impressive that an 'inaugural' World Cup finalist was still alive fewer than ten years ago...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/o...l-2069084.html

[Satchmo Distel]

According to that link, Horst Eckel (1954) is the only current survivor from that era, now aged 88. Zagallo (1958) is slightly older than Eckel, as he turns 89 on August 9th, but he is beaten by Reino Borjesson (91). Varallo (1930) is still presumably the only finalist to live to 100. For 1958, Pele turns 80 on October 23rd, which makes him not just the youngest survivor in G-Man's OP from 1958 but one of the youngest from the Brazil squad of 1962, although he missed the final.

Uwe Seeler replaced Jack Charlton as eldest 1966 survivor, followed by Bobby Charlton. Both are older than the two Czechoslovakia 1962 survivors and older than Amarildo, who survives alongside Zagallo.

No deaths since 1986 might be a tribute to how clubs have monitored the diets and smoking of players since then, although Ursus is also correct to note the role of rotten luck in unforseeable deaths like road accidents (such as Scirea), which no post-86 player has experienced.