6 La Liga stars from 2005-06 we can’t believe are still playing today
The 2005-06 season was a beautiful time to watch Spanish football, from Zinedine Zidane winding down his career to Ronaldinho in his Ballon d’Or-winning pomp to a young lad called Lionel Messi starting to catch the eye at Barcelona.
We all know that Messi is still going strong today out at Inter Miami. But what about the other youngsters from that era who are still playing as golden oldies in 2025?
Here are six players from the 2005-06 La Liga campaign we can’t believe are still playing today.
Raul Albiol
The 2005-06 season was a young Albiol’s breakthrough year at Valencia. In fact, he was named La Liga’s Breakthrough Player of the Year.
While the defender was overlooked for Spain’s 2006 World Cup squad, he went on to make his international debut in 2007 and go on to represent La Roja 58 times.
He was also part of their squad for all three of their major tournament triumphs between 2008 and 2012, albeit mostly watching on from the bench.
Club career highlights include a Copa del Rey with his boyhood club, the La Liga title with Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid in 2011-12, a Coppa Italia with Napoli and the Europa League with his current club, Villarreal.
The grizzled veteran turned 39 in September but still regularly starts for the Yellow Submarine as they chase a top-four finish. Some longevity at the top level, that.
Santi Cazorla
Ah Santi. Surely one of the most universally loved footballers of the modern era.
Details of the midfielder’s injury hell in his 2018 interview with The Guardian will make you wince and make you question how on earth he didn’t hang up his boots after leaving Arsenal.
But here he is, back home with Real Oviedo, still loving his football at the age of 40.
A lovely bookend to a wonderful career that started out two decades ago, catching the eye for Manuel Pellegrini’s Villarreal as they made it all the way to the Champions League semi-finals in 2005-06.
After leaving Arsenal in 2018 he enjoyed an Indian summer back at the El Madrigal before three lucrative years with Qatari side Al Sadd (you can’t blame him, can you?) and finally a long-awaited homecoming to Asturias.
Lesser-known players from that Villarreal squad, Marquitos and Carlos Alcantara, are also still playing today in the lower reaches of the Spanish football pyramid.
The former with Club Deportivo Ibiza and the latter with CAP Ciudad de Murcia.
Carlos Vela
Technically the former Mexico international might not still be active.
He’s currently without a club after being released by LAFC at the end of the 2024 MLS campaign.
Finding a new one might not be his biggest priority given the shocking news that his Malibu home burned down in the recent California wildfires.
But Vela is still only 35, hasn’t made any announcement about retiring, and may yet have life in his legs yet.
Back in 2005-06, he’d just signed for Arsenal but work permit issues forced them to send him straight out on loan to Celta Vigo.
Admittedly he barely featured that year, but later became something of a La Liga stalwart at Real Sociedad.
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Dani Guiza
Guiza went under the radar a bit in 2005-06. He scored nine league goals for a midtable Getafe side that year before making himself something of a Spanish football cult hero in subsequent years.
David Villa, Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero, Luis Fabiano, Diego Forlan, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Raul were all famously outscored by the striker in the 2007-08 campaign, in which he scored 27 La Liga goals back at Mallorca.
Off the back of that brilliant season, he earned his place in Spain’s Euro 2008-winning squad alongside Cazorla and Albiol.
Later in his nomadic, journeyman career he lifted league titles in Turkey and Paraguay.
After leaving Paraguay back in 2015, Guiza – aged 44! – has spent the past decade turning out for a variety of clubs lower down in Spain’s footballing pyramid.
He’s currently playing for Rotena, a club that don’t even have a Wikipedia. Proper ‘love of the game’ stuff, that.
QUIZ: Can you name the top scorer for every La Liga season since 1990?
Nene
You might remember the Brazilian midfielder from his 100+ appearances for PSG around the time of their takeover transformation, or his short-lived stint at West Ham.
But before all that, he was something of a La Liga stalwart in the mid-noughties, from Mallorca to Alaves to Celta Vigo.
He wasn’t especially young then, having made his professional debut back in Brazil at the tail end of the 1990s.
Amazingly he’s still going at the age of 43, having turned out for a string of top Brazilian clubs – Sao Paulo, Fluminense, Vasca da Gama – since his quiet departure from Upton Park in 2015.
He’s still turning out for Juventude. Back in August, at 43 years and 26 days old, he became the oldest player to score in the Brazilian top flight, surpassing the record previously held by Rogerio Ceni.
Felipe Melo
Nene isn’t the only Brazilian La Liga old boy still going in Brazil. Kind of.
Felipe Melo’s time in Italy (Fiorentina, Juventus, Inter Milan) and Turkey (Galatasaray) was more memorable, but his European career started way back in the mid-noughties with spells at Mallorca, Racing Santander and Almeria.
“I really want and dream about renewing my contract with Fluminense and playing in the [2025 Club] World Cup,” Melo told reporters back in September.
“But the decision has already been made to stop playing football at the end of next year. We’ll see what I do next, but yes, I will become a football coach.”
Let’s see whether he’ll sign an extension after his contract expired at the end of the 2024 season.
The infamously industrious midfielder is 41 but would evidently love to keep going, and was part of a Copa Libertadores-winning side as recently as 2023.
The likes of Lionel Messi, Cole Palmer, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe are all set to star at this summer’s Club World Cup.
You imagine they all wait with bated breath over the prospect of getting on one of the end of his crunching challenges.