The selected players have won a World Cup between 17 and 23 years of age. Only those who played at least one game in their respective World Cup have been chosen. Priority has been given to those who played most matches as regular starter with an exception for the goalkeepers since Bodo Illgner is the only one who won a World Cup and played at least one match (he played all of them). At least one player per winning national team is part of the 23-men squad. Giuseppe Meazza is set as captain because he's the only player amongst the selected ones who won a World Cup as captain, even though he had that role in his second World Cup win.




Coach: Alberto SUPPICI (the youngest coach to win a World Cup)




GOALKEEPERS:

Bodo ILLGNER
Émerson LEÃO


DEFENDERS:

Giuseppe BERGOMI
Paul BREITNER
Ernesto MASCHERONI
Gerard PIQUÉ
Pietro RAVA
Stefan REUTER
Alberto TARANTINI


MIDFIELDERS:

Víctor ANDRADE
Rainer BONHOF
Jorge BURRUCHAGA
Sergio BUSQUETS
CLODOALDO
Horst ECKEL
Mario GÖTZE
Uli HOENEß


FORWARDS:

Alcides GHIGGIA
Mario KEMPES
Kylian MBAPPÉ
Giuseppe MEAZZA
PELÉ
TOSTÃO


__________________________________________________


RESERVES:


GOALKEEPERS:

ADO
Luis ISLAS
Heinz KUBSCH


DEFENDERS:

Néstor CLAUSEN
Lucas HERNÁNDEZ
Presnel KIMPEMBE
MARCO ANTÔNIO
Benjamin MENDY
Shkodran MUSTAFI
ORLANDO
Benjamin PAVARD
Ânderson POLGA


MIDFIELDERS:

Alan BALL
Sergio BATISTA
Enzo FERNÁNDEZ
Américo GALLEGO
Álvaro GESTIDO
KLÉBERSON
Ugo LOCATELLI
Alexis MAC ALLISTER
Martin PETERS
RONALDINHO
Corentin TOLISSO
José Daniel VALENCIA


FORWARDS:

Julián ÁLVAREZ
AMARILDO
Daniel BERTONI
Felice BOREL
Pablo DORADO
Alberto GILARDINO
Enrique GUAITA
Thierry HENRY
MAZZOLA
Óscar MÍGUEZ
André SCHÜRRLE
VAVÁ

In my opinion I would definitely choose Bergomi over Pavard and Tarantini over Lucas. Pavard was arguably France’s worst starting player at that tournament and Tarantini was a better player than Lucas (at least for now).

Yeah, I was in doubt between Tarantini and Lucas. About Bergomi, I didn't choose him because he played only twice in 1982 as regular starter and once as substitute. However, thinking about him, he was featured in the last two games of the tournament. I guess I'll replace Lucas and Pavard with them.

I was about to suggest to put Bergomi over Rava and Tostão over Burruchaga, but criterias are criterias.

PS: And that will mean that the formation must be offensively reordered, so better no.

PS2: However, looking around the reserves, I miss Ghiggia here because he produced one of the most iconic World Cup moments ever, he could be over Bertoni, though i can respect that he was left out for tactical decision.

My choices weren't exactly technical but mostly related to the number of matches played in the World Cup tournament the players won, therefore Ghiggia could replace Bertoni in the 23-men squad and Bergomi could replace Rava in the first team.
About Tostão replacing Burruchaga, that could be done. The possible solutions are two AMFs and either Meazza or Pelé as CF or Busquets and Burruchaga as CMFs and Tostão as AMF. In any case I'd replace Kempes who was though really important in the 1978 World Cup with 6 goals scored.

You won't bench Kempes you mean?

To be honest, yeah, I wouldn't. Kempes is basically the reason why I left Tostão in the bench. So what do you ultimately suggest?

The starting XI looks fine to me, I wouldn't replace Kempes since he was the best player of that tournament and the main driving force of Argentina's win. Maybe you could directly replace Burruchaga with Tostao since he could play that position anyway without any problems (at least in game, he's a better AMF than Burruchaga).

Can't believe that both Ghiggia and Götze who actually decided WC finals are only in reserves here..
Not even mentioning both Gallego and Batista in first team instead of Bonhof and Andrade who were both better players (not only in general but also during that WCs)..

Ghiggia was already suggested by StuartBannigan but I forgot to add him instead of Bertoni. You know I used the criteria of appearances as regular starter then in general, trying to have at least one player per nation. I know both Bonhof and Andrade were better than Gallego and Batista. Therefore I'll make the changes. By the way, who would you replace for Götze?

Well difficult question: As a German I'd of course say Peters (never forget 1966 ) but after all the "problem" is that Götze wasn't an undisputed member of our WC winning team but on the other hand he scored the winning goal. So it's hard to make the right choice here..
Btw, quite interesting to see how different the careers of those players went: For some of them the WC was already the peak of their career while for others it was just the start of a long and succesful career..

And others were relatively 'average' at best like Schürrle, Ânderson Polga, and Kléberson.

Schürrle is a difficult case: He was mostly average at his clubs but until 2014/2015 he was excellent player at the NT, especially when coming on as a substitute.
From our 2014 I'd rather mention Mustafi: Many in Germany say that his injury against Algeria was crucial for the title because after that Löw had to move Lahm back to the RB position with Schweinsteiger/Khedira/Kroos taking over the midfield. Mustafi's nomination was already quite a surprise, since he was nominated as replacement for Reus who had been injured in the last test game against Armenia and instead of nominating a forward (I'd have gone for Kevin Volland at that time), Löw came up with Mustafi

Schürrle at least got the assist for a World Cup winning goal so he would be here no matter what, I think the reserves just have every player who fits the criteria though (after all, not many players have won the World Cup, much less at a young age). Anyway I don't know much about Horst Eckel but Peters is probably the most expendable player there, even if he was pretty important in 1966 I'd say that he wasn't even England's best young midfielder in that squad because Alan Ball was a better player than him.

Since I'd like to have all national teams represented, as already mentioned, would you rather replace Peters with Ball then?