The players selected for this team won a World Cup between the age of 17 and 23 and played at least one game in their respective winning World Cup campaigns. Priority is given to those who played most games as regular starters with the only exception being the goalkeepers as Bodo Illgner is the only one who won a World Cup after playing at least one match in the tournament (he played all of them in 1990). Giuseppe Meazza is the automatic captain as he's the only player in the list to win a World Cup as captain, even though he filled the role in his second World Cup winning campaign.




COACH: Alberto SUPPICI (youngest ever coach to win a World Cup)




GOALKEEPERS:

Émerson LEÃO
Bodo ILLGNER


DEFENDERS:

Pietro RAVA
Paul BREITNER
Alberto TARANTINI
Giuseppe BERGOMI
Stefan REUTER
Gerard PIQUÉ
Pau CUBARSÍ


MIDFIELDERS:

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


FORWARDS:

Giuseppe MEAZZA
Alcides GHIGGIA
PELÉ
TOSTÃO
Mario KEMPES
Kylian MBAPPÉ
Lamine YAMAL


__________________________________________________


RESERVES:


GOALKEEPERS:

Heinz KUBSCH
ADO
Luis ISLAS


DEFENDERS:

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


MIDFIELDERS:

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


FORWARDS:

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

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?