Otamendi and Enzo, first players in Portugal to win the World Cup
Nicolás Otamendi and Enzo Fernández are the first players to play in Portugal to win the final of a football World Cup.
The two Benfica players started for Argentina in this Sunday’s final against France, at the Lusail stadium, in Qatar.
Midfielder Enzo Fernández ended up winning the award for the best young player in the World Cup.
The pampas selection ended up stamping the third star (repeating 1978 and 1986) after a crazy final, which ended 3-3 in regular time and 4-2 in the big debts.
Otamendi and Enzo repeat, in Qatar, the feats of four other players, two of them from Benfica, one from FC Porto and another from Sporting.
doriva he was the first player to play in Portugal to participate in the final of a World Cup. It was in France 1998. The Brazilian midfielder, who at the time represented FC Porto, watched from the bench (he never entered the pitch) as his team lost 3-0 to the hosts.
It took 16 years to see the “Portuguese” players in the final of a World Cup again – and there were just three. In Brazil 2014,
Ezequiel Garay and Enzo Perezfrom Benfica, and
Marcos Rojoof Sporting, were starters in the defeat of Argentina against Germany, by 1-0.
There were several in Portugal before and after
In 2014, the history of finalists operating in Portugal ended.
There were several who moved to Portugal after a World Cup final. For example, and already in the 21st century, the French Adil Rami (2018) in Boavista; the Brazilian Anderson Polga (2002), the first world champion of Portuguese football, and the Dutch Khalid Boulahrouz and Stijn Schaars (2010), at Sporting; Spaniard Joan Capdevilla (2010) and German Julian Draxler (2014) at Benfica; or the best known of all, the Spaniard Iker Casillas (2010) at FC Porto.
Players like Ángel Di María, David Luiz, Branco and others remained in national football even before participating in the World Cup finals.
Benfica has already congratulated its two athletes: