World Cup Final: Five Spurs players set to have appeared in football’s biggest game

Photo: Danilo Borges/copa2014.gov.br Licença Creative Commons Atribuição 3.0 Brasil / CC BY 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Sunday's World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina in New York (8pm UK) could leave Tottenham Hotspur with five players — current or former — who have appeared on football's biggest stage.

Pedro Porro starts for Spain, while Cristian Romero and new signing Marcos Senesi line up for Argentina. Romero is set for his second World Cup Final appearance, having won the trophy with Argentina in 2022. Porro scored in Spain's semi-final win over France, while Senesi featured in the group stage.

Eleven Spurs players in total, past or present, have appeared in a World Cup Final. In order: Martin Peters (England, 1966), Ossie Ardiles (Argentina, 1978), Jurgen Klinsmann (Germany, 1990), Nicola Berti (Italy, 1994), Christian Ziege (Germany, 2002), William Gallas (France, 2006), Rafa van der Vaart (Holland, 2010), Ivan Perisic and Luka Modric (Croatia, 2018), Hugo Lloris (France, 2018 and 2022) and Cristian Romero (Argentina, 2022).

Of those, only Ziege, Lloris and Romero were Spurs players at the time of their appearances. The 2022 final between Argentina and France drew a global audience of approximately 1.5 billion viewers, compared with an estimated 125.6 million for Super Bowl LX.

Martin Peters, who made 260 appearances and scored 76 goals for Spurs between 1970 and 1975, scored England's second goal in the 1966 final at Wembley — a 4-2 win over West Germany. Writing in his 2006 autobiography, 'The Ghost of '66', Peters described the moment: "For a second I couldn't take it all in. Suddenly, the roar of the crowd was rolling down the terraces. I'd scored — in the World Cup Final! It was the most extraordinary moment, like being struck by lightning."

Ossie Ardiles, who made 311 appearances and scored 25 goals for Spurs between 1978 and 1988, played 66 minutes of the 1978 final despite carrying a broken toe. "To play in a World Cup Final… you know immediately that it's going to be the most important game in your life," he said. "The pressure was incredibly high. You cannot possibly describe it."

Rafa van der Vaart, capped 109 times by the Netherlands, entered the 2010 final against Spain off the bench in extra time and was handed the captain's armband when Gio van Bronckhorst departed on 105 minutes. Andres Iniesta scored the only goal ten minutes later. "It's the biggest game of your life, the biggest game in the world," van der Vaart said. "I'm so thankful, even though we lost, that I got the chance to play in a World Cup Final."

Hugo Lloris, who made 447 appearances for Spurs between 2012 and 2024 and holds the French record with 145 caps, became the first Spurs player to win the World Cup when he captained France to a 4-2 victory over Croatia in Moscow in 2018. Four years later, he became the first Spur to appear in two finals, losing to Argentina in 2022. "It's an achievement that is difficult to describe and I will always be grateful to my team-mates because you win trophies as a team," Lloris said.

Ivan Perisic, who made 50 appearances for Spurs between 2022 and 2024, scored in the 2018 final for Croatia but finished on the losing side as France won 4-2. "When you start to play football, you dream of doing something like this," he said. "I can say that I played in the final of the World Cup and I think that it's going to be the best thing in my career."