Players who matured and delivered well into their thirties. Pick your all time vintage team.

Thread needs more Di Natale. Between 09-11 only Messi and Ronaldo had more league goals than him and he was in his 30s.

Also, Stanley Matthews and Dino Zoff (best goalkeeper of España '82 at age 39).

I’m not really sure about the “matured” thing — if I understand it correctly, than hardly any player that’s been mentioned qualifies. However good, day, Puskas was in his 30’s, he was a better player in his late 20’s.

There’s really not many players who had upped their game and had their best spells post-30, Ibra and Di Natale certainly deserve a mention. A weird short pick can be attributed to van Moer, who had been brought back to the national team after who knows how many years of, basically, retirement, and led Belgium to the Euros final. It’s more challenging to do the one like this, so I’ll try to make one later.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Not sure how many strikers have the same stats, I seriously doubt that there are that many. And yes, he had mostly played in an easier league but still.


Cristiano Ronaldo. The case when he was clearly better in his late 20's, but he had adjusted to the new reality very well by changing his playing style and even his muscle mass.

Stanley Matthews. It's hard to say how good he was in his 20's, but a huge part of them coincided with the WWII. A lot of significant moments of his career happened in its later years — like the 1953's "Matthews final". It's absolutely ridiculous that he had played professionally basically until he had turned 50!

Paul Scholes. He had reinvented himself in his early 30's — you can even pinpoint the moment when he did that, that would be his eyes surgery. Scholes was brilliant as a young goalscoring box-to-box, but his deep-lying playmaker version was something else entirely.

Andrea Pirlo. Unsurprisingly similar story to Scholes — and it's obvious why that those midfield playmakers would dominate such lists. Their passing, vision and understanding of the game only gets better with age and they don't need to run that much if the team's shape is adjusted to them. Signing a "past it" Pirlo is quite possibly the greatest transfer in Juve's history, as he had jump-started their way back to the top.

Wilfred van Moer. I won't go into detail on him, since there's a great article on the matter:

Some feared the Belgium midfielder would never be the same again after breaking his leg against Italy at Euro 1972, explains Michael Yokhin – but he bounced back to take his revenge eight years later

Click to expand...

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/wilfried-van-moer-and-greatest-comeback-story-youve-never-heard

Laurent Blanc. It wasn't a clear reinvention, but I really rate his later version. He had turned 30 in 1995 — he would transfer to his first big club only a year later, in 1996, and his major success with the national team will come even after that (1998 World Cup and 2000 Euros). 3 times in ESM Team of the Year, once Inter's player of the year and 2 inclusions in Euros TotT (there was a third one, but it happened in 1992, so it doesn't count).

Paolo Maldini. He wasn't as great as he was in his 20's, but he had reinvented himself — more and more often he had appeared as a center back after Baresi's retirement in 1997.

Cafu. It's a bit unfair to say that he was better in his 30's simply because we're so Euro-centristic in our assessments of players — he was an absolute monster in Brazil and he was absolutely unstoppable going forward. Still, he had turned 30 in 2000 — since then he had a fantastic performance at the 2002 World Cup, he continued to perform brilliantly for AS Roma, eventually getting into their Hall of Fame... and then he had transferred to AC Milan aged 33 and spent the next 5 years there. And this was the time when AC Milan was probably the best side in the world. Multiple UEFA TotY inclusions and a lot of different Team of the Decade inclusions that are relevant to this period.

Nílton Santos. It's cheating, since we've never saw him before his 30's (no footage from that era), but he had won 2 World Cups and secured a place at the very top of any decent list of all-time great fullbacks in the "wrong" decade of his career.

Dino Zoff. Moved to Juventus a couple of months after turning 30 (he'll win 6 Serie A titles, UEFA Cup ; his debute for Italy came when he was 28 years old. Going by the individual accolades, his best year would probably be 1973 (he holds the record for the longest playing time without allowing goals in international tournaments, 1142 minutes, set between 1972 and 1974)— he had finished runner up for Ballon d'Or behind a certain Johan Cruyff and beating peak Gerd Müller and Franz Beckenbauer along the way. Lifting the World Cup aged 40 was quite special as well.

Alternative: Lev Yashin. Perhaps an even better case of a player who had rejuvenated his career in mid 30's. By 1962 everyone thought that he was done — already a 33 years old keeper had cost his team a place in a semi-final. He was ostracized in the Soviet press and benched for both USSR and Dynamo Moscow. L'Equipe also said that this was the end of his illustrious career. A year later after a series of all-time great performances (in the league, in World Cup qualifiers, saving a penalty from Sandro Mazzola, and shocked the whole world with a mesmerising performance at Wembley).