7 brilliant footballers who peaked in their mid-30s: Di Natale, Vardy, Sheringham…
Do you know who Queena Wong is? Nah, us neither. Apparently she’s a fine wine collector who likes to age her wines before she drinks them…
“There is something magic that happens when you give wine the time to mature. It is like a human being – a baby is different to a toddler before transforming into unruly adolescents and finally into a mature adult. It’s the same DNA though there is something more palatable with maturity! The roughness and the edges of youth are gone and you are left with the pure essence of soul.”
Sounds like bullsh*t to us. Don’t know about wine, but those words definitely apply to footballers.
We’ve picked out seven footballers whose roughness and edges of youth disappeared in their 30s, leaving us with the pure essence of soul. We’ve not gone for your classic Modrics, your Zidanes, your Maldinis—and we’ve gone for generally more attack-minded players because defenders and keepers tend to peak later naturally. We’re not messing around.
Luca Toni
Toni’s career didn’t get going until he was 27. The Italian had just spent a few seasons at Brescia alongside an ageing Roberto Baggio when he swapped blue for pink and signed for Palermo.
In his first season he scored 30 Serie B goals, got the Sicilians promoted, and followed that up with a 20-goal season in Serie A.
A couple of seasons partnering Bobby Baggio will do that for you.
Fiorentina snapped him up, and he scored 3q Serie A goals in his first season in Florence. Madness. Toni won the World Cup with Italy in 2006, had a couple of superb seasons at Bayern Munich, then went off the boil for a little while.
Toni went around the houses in Italy, had a year in Saudi Arabia where it looked like he might retire, but then, in 2013, at the age of 36, he made a late-career move to Verona, and scored 20+ goals in two consecutive seasons. An absolute Lambrusco of a baller.
Aritz Aduriz
Athletic Club’s late-blooming talisman enjoyed his first 20+ goal season (all comps) the year he turned 34. He repeated this feat for the following three seasons before eventually slowing down and retiring in 2020.
He just kept getting better and better, and then, one day, he just stopped. Just like that.
Fun fact: Aduriz once finished runner-up in a junior national cross-country skiing championship. In Spain. Where the f*ck was he practising cross-country skiing in Spain?
We’ll look into it—article incoming.
Gianfranco Zola
Luca Toni learned his craft with Robert Baggio, Gianfranco Zola blossomed as Diego Maradona’s understudy and successor at Napoli.
Four years in Southern Italy, three years in that legendary Parma side of the mid-90s, and then, at the age of 30, Chelsea.
Zola became a hero during his seven years at Chelsea and is still considered by many to be one of the Blues’ best-ever players despite the subsequent riches and trophies and superstar signings.
At 5’6″ and in his mid-30s, Zola had defenders a foot taller and a decade younger than him tripping over themselves, quaking at the sight of him dribbling towards him, technique unfettered by the gargantuan shinpads that must have weighed almost as much as the man himself.
What a player.
Jamie Vardy
Vardy didn’t reach the heights of the Premier League until he was 27 years old, won it at 29, been banging goals in ever since. Not sure how he’s still doing it, to be honest. Man is 78% Red Bull at this point.
Scored on his first game back in the Premier League, too, after a season away in The Championship. He’s 37 now. Truly think he might still be snapping at defenders’ ankles well into his 50s. He lives for it, man.
It’s either that, or he’s gonna be chaining ciggies outside a takeaway somewhere in Leicester for the rest of his days. One or the other.
And you might as well get started on the statue now, Leicester City big wigs. Because he’s getting one. Jamie Vardy is getting a statue outside the King Power, whether you f*cking like it or not.
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Antonio Di Natale
Toto Natale or, in English, Tony Christmas is your favourite footballer. Born in the working-class streets of Naples, Di Natale didn’t make his career-defining move to Udinese until he was nearly 27.
Didn’t have his first 20+ goal season until he was 33, then repeated that trick for the following four seasons.
He scored beautiful goals—check his YouTube highlights reels, they’re silly—he turned down a big move to Juventus because his kids liked living in Udine, and he took on financial responsibility for his former teammate Piermario Morisini’s disabled sister when Morosini died in 2012.
A great person, a beautiful later bloomer, and a 5’7″ prolific striker. Forza, Toto Di Natale.
Teddy Sheringham
Someone we’d be less inclined to go for a pint than Toto Di Natale, given the choice, but another late-blooming forward of superb ability.
He didn’t go to Manchester United until he was 30, and he continued to play at the top level of English football (apart from one prolific year in the Championship with West Ham) for another ten years without ever really going off the boil.
Sheringham briefly became a poker player when his football career came to an end. That just makes sense to us, somehow—Teddy Sheringham playing professional poker.
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the 25 oldest Premier League goalscorers in history?
Fabio Quagliarella
Fabio Quagliarella retired last year. He was playing in Serie A when a Lazio side consisting of Roberto Mancini, Diego Simeone, Alessandro Nesta, Juan Sebastian Veron, and Pavel Nedved, coached by Sven Goran Eriksson, won the Scudetto as we all watched on Channel 4’s Gazzetta Football Italia.
Yet, Quagliarella retired last year.
Another evergreen Italian with a highlights reel to be enjoyed with a glass of equally beautifully aged wine, Quagliarella was still reaching double figures for goals in Serie A in 2021, at the grand old age of 38.
And that’s after he had to deal with his family being stalked by some lunatic in Naples for five years, and the emotional trauma that comes with something like that.