Nine World Cup icons as you’ve never seen them before ...Middle East

The brilliance of Brazilian great and record three-time World Cup winner Pele. The England men’s team hoisting the trophy back in 1966. Lionel Messi following in Diego Maradona’s footsteps.

The Fifa World Cup has given us many of history’s great sporting moments, and in turn a plethora of iconic photographs through which these moments live on.

With commentary also from Julian Ridgway, managing archive editor at Getty Images, here is a visual look at players before the world knew what they would become – early archive shots of footballers who later defined the tournament.

Pele

Where better to start than with the late, great Pele – the only man with three World Cup winners’ medals in the history of football.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the boy who became the iconic centre-piece of a star-studded Brazilian generation, was pictured in football kit aged 10 in Bauru, a municipality in Sao Paulo.

Few may have predicted that eight years later, as a still-diminutive teenager he would become the youngest player to both play and score at a World Cup, achieving the latter record – which he still holds – when he found the net in the 1958 quarter-final against Wales aged 17 years and 239 days old.

Days later, Pele became the youngest scorer of a World Cup hat-trick when he bagged a treble in the space of just over 20 minutes during Brazil’s semi-final victory over France. He scored twice more in that year’s final against Sweden, leading Brazil to its first title. The Brazilians repeated as World Cup champions in 1962, despite their trend-setting talisman suffering a tournament-ending injury in the second match after scoring and assisting in the first.

Following a disappointing 1966 campaign for Brazil, Pelé led his country to its third title in 1970 with a further four goals; the last of those, which was also Brazil’s 100th goal at a World Cup – celebrated with a leap of joy into the arms of teammate Jairzinho – came in the 4-1 demolition of Italy, alongside two of his six assists at the tournament.

Pele died aged 82 in December 2022, his name firmly etched in football’s history books as well as the sport’s never-ending “GOAT’ (Greatest Of All Time) debate.

Sir Bobby Charlton

Capitalisng on the biggest blip in Brazil’s Pele-era success, England battled to World Cup glory on home soil in 1966 – a triumph that remains the defining moment in footballing history for the nation’s men’s team.

Playing a central role in that successful campaign was Sir Bobby Charlton, with England’s attacking midfield dynamo scoring two particularly pivotal goals to down Portugal in the semi-final and set-up a Wembley meeting with West Germany. He went on to win the Ballon d’Or the same year, becoming the first Englishman to do so after pipping Portugal’s Eusébio, and finished second in voting for the award in the two years that followed.

Charlton, who racked up a then-record 106 caps and 49 goals for his country, featured for England at three World Cups in total – 1962, 1966 and 1970 – after being an unused squad member in 1958, the year he made his debut.

A few months before that tournament in Sweden, the 20-year-old from Northumberland was pictured having some light-hearted fun with England teammates during a training session at Roehampton. Eight years later, he was a world beater.

Manchester United legend Charlton, who died aged 86 in 2023, is considered by many to be England’s greatest-ever player.

Sir Geoff Hurst

Charlton’s performances earned him the Ballon d’Or in 1966, but it was ultimately the goals of striker Geoff Hurst that saw England emerge victorious from that year’s World Cup final.

Hurst scored three of them in total, marking the first-ever hat-trick in a World Cup final. In the six decades that have followed, the 84-year-old has so far seen just one man – Kylian Mbappe – repeat that feat.

An image from Getty’s archives, dated 11 February 1964, showed the former West Ham frontman studying tea leaves for a prediction of his side’s FA Cup tie against Swindon that month – a match which the Hammers went on to win, with Hurst scoring, en route to victory in the final of that competition with Hurst on the score sheet once again.

It would be another two years before Hurst made his senior England debut, but could the slight smile he sports in that old snap suggest that he foresaw what was to come? Perhaps!

Franz Beckenbauer

A key duel in the 1966 final pitted England’s Sir Bobby against Franz Beckenbauer of West Germany.

And that loss at Wembley was far from the end for der Kaiser (“the Emperor”), who scored to help send England home early from Mexico four years later. West Germany finished third at that 1970 World Cup but, with Beckenbauer named captain, went on to clinch the 1972 European Championship as the man himself won his first of two Ballon d’Ors.

Beckenbauer soon skippered his country to home World Cup glory in 1974 and later lifted the World Cup again with his country as a manager in 1990.

Regarded as one of football’s best and most influential players, Beckenbauer’s passing in 2024 at the age of 78 was met with an outpouring of tributes from fellow greats of the game.

Diego Maradona

Diego Maradona was far from an unknown name by the time of his victorious 1986 World Cup campaign with Argentina, having already become the first player to command new world record transfer fees twice with his moves to Barcelona and Napoli in the preceding years.

Still, that summer in Mexico saw el Pibe de Oro (“The Golden Boy”) reach another stratosphere, scoring five goals – including the now infamous “Hand of God” – and assisting five more to claim the Golden Ball for best player at the tournament.

At the age of 13, Maradona was playing with the Buenos Aires club’s junior side, Los Cebollitas. There, Getty photographer Eduardo Comesana captured the above photograph – the youngest the agency has of the late footballer, who died aged 60 in 2020 – sitting with his then-teammates in 1973, less than a decade before soaring to superstardom.

Gary Lineker

One member of the 1986 England squad on the wrong side Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal was Gary Lineker, who still managed to clinch the tournament’s Golden Boot award for top scorer with six goals despite going home after a quarter-final defeat to Argentina.

Above the picture celebrating his hat-trick against Poland at Mexico 1986, Lineker is pictured during the 1983-84 season, his first as a regular First Division player, just two years before he announced himself on the world stage.

Ronaldo Nazario

Ronaldo Nazario. The original Ronaldo. R9.

Ronaldo collected his first World Cup winners’ medal before he had played a single minute in the tournament. As a 17-year-old he was part of Brazil’s victorious 1994 squad and would go on to win the competition again in 2002, finishing his World Cup career with 15 goals.

In 2002, he was the tournament’s top scorer with eight goals, helping Brazil win their fifth and most recent title with both goals in the 2-0 win over Germany.

Cristiano Ronaldo

It is six World Cup finals appearances and out for Cristiano Ronaldo, we think, with the Portugal captain bowing out after their 2026 exit.

At 41, Ronaldo became the oldest ever player to appear in a World Cup knockout match and the second oldest to score in a World Cup game.

He has also scored and played in every edition (six) since the World Cup, although he was able to win the trophy.

Could he make the 2030 World Cup, co-hosted by Portugal? Time will tell. He will be 45 by then.

Lionel Messi

Qatar 2022 finally gave Lionel Messi the one prize that had eluded him. The Argentina captain scored seven goals during the tournament as his country won the World Cup for the first time since 1986.

Messi’s World Cup journey has spanned six tournaments. Along the way he became Argentina’s all-time leading World Cup appearance holder, the first player to win the Golden Ball award twice, and the World Cup’s leading scorer in history.

The boy from Rosario became many people’s GOAT.

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