Maldini definitely did not play in the 70s, no chance. Might've been in their youth side, but he didn't start playing for the main side until the mid-80s at the earliest. He was in his mid-30s when he scored against Liverpool in the Champions League final in 2005. EDIT: he was born in 1968 - there's no chance.
James Coppinger debut for the Mags in 1998 Played in 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s Correction *Maldini was on AC Milan books in the 1980s not 1970s. Playing for their youth side in 1984, aged 16, not 1978 as previously stated. Apologise.
Did Giggs sneak a Man United game in in the late 80s? Otherwise he managed to do 3 decades at Man Utd. Same with Scholes and the Nevilles. Bobby Charlton just snuck in 4 decades (50s to 80s) by playing four games in Australia in 1980.
Weren’t they all ‘92? That Charlton reference just made me wonder about players who’ve had a last chance in the US, did Pelé play late on in the old US league before MLS?
this reminds me of one of my bet hates. it's when idiots describe someone's career as, for example, "spanning three decades". what they usually mean is the person's career included, say, the end of the fifties, all the sixties, and a bit of the seventies. or, with a more extreme example, a career that "spanned two decades", which, as far as the ******s are concerned, probably means the career started on 31st december 1979 and ended on january 1st 1980. and that brings me helpfully to the b@$t@rdi5@tion of the word "spanned". what sort of crap bridge would it be that went half a percent of the distance across a river? for a career or a bridge or whatever to span some sort of distance, whether time or actual distance, it has to go all the way across it, not to project one yoctometre over one side of it. there was recently an article about cliff richard having hits (or maybe number ones) in eight decades, by which they meant fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, nougthties, tenties, and twenties. all in the space of 62 years!
Billy Bly was still with City in 1960 and I am fairly sure he made (at least) the odd appearance that year. His full debut was in 1939 and again I'm 'fairly sure' he was our first player to play in 4 decades. Played for Weymouth in 1961.
You're right - according to his bio (The India Rubber Man) he was released by City sometime in '60, although I can't find any reference to games he played in '60. Your memory is much more likely to be better than mine.
Peter Shilton did it with loads of clubs. He first played for Leicester in 1966. I think he was 16 or 17. I checked him out and found that Les Sealey did it as well. This quote was interesting from when he was manager at Plymouth. It's from Wiki so it must be true: "His £300,000 record signing Peter Swan proved to be a disaster as the player had an awful relationship with both his teammates and the fans."
Yeah, Swan was universally detested by the fans at Plymouth. I think he still regularly tops their worst ever player polls.
One of my favourite stats is between them, Gianluigi Buffon, Peter Shilton and Stanley Matthews have made at least one first-team appearance in every season since 1931-32.
