Experience can be invaluable at a World Cup when you’re under pressure in the final stages.
It can be even more important when a shocking group stage elimination looms and you need someone to pull an ace up their sleeve and save the team.
No coach wants to go into a major tournament without a handful of seasoned stars who have done it before.
We will use the mean age as there are several different measurements that give different results for the oldest team. The average age of both the Belgium and Iran teams is 29.
There has been much talk of this being the last chance for Belgium’s golden generation to win a major tournament after promising so much over the past decade. The fact that the Belgians are the oldest and most experienced team in Qatar shows that Roberto Martinez still relies on the old guard and only sprinkles a few youngsters into the squad.
The squad includes five players aged 22 or under: Zeno Debast (19), Jeremy Doku (20), Charles De Ketelaere (21), Amadou Onana (21) and Lois Openda (22).
In addition, Simon Mignolet, Thibaut Courtois, Koen Casteels, Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld, Axel Witsel, Thomas Meunier, Kevin De Bruyne, Hans Vanaken, Dries Mertens and Eden Hazard are all in their thirties.
Belgium play Canada, Croatia and Morocco in Group F and have a good chance of reaching the round of 16. That’s where the hard work begins, however, as this star-studded squad hopes to finally win the World Championship.
There are two 35-year-old players in the Belgium squad, but Jan Vertonghen is the oldest player on the plane. He is a few weeks older than striker Dries Mertens.
It feels like Vertonghen has been around forever, which is probably because he is. He started at Ajax in 2006, where he made 155 appearances. He then spent eight years at Tottenham Hotspur where he made over 230 caps before joining Benfica. Now he has returned to RSC Anderlecht in his home country.
Since his debut in 2007, he has made 141 appearances for the Belgium national team and featured at the 2014 and 2018 World Cups.
The record for the oldest player at a World Cup was recently broken. At the 2018 tournament in Russia, Essam El Hadary scored for Egypt at the age of 45 years and 161 days.
It’s often the goalkeepers who break the age record, but Cameroonian legend Roger Milla is still third on the list. He played at the 1994 World Cup aged 42 years and 39 days.
This article was originally posted on 90min.de as Who is the oldest team at the World Cup? released.
