9 players we still can’t believe played in a World Cup final

The World Cup final is the biggest game in football, so it always features the biggest stars in football, right? Well, not always.

Obviously, nobody who makes a World Cup squad for any nation, never mind a nation strong enough to play in a final, is a bad footballer. But they aren’t necessarily world-class either.

Sometimes, players sneak into squads and watch their team progress from the bench, only to be called upon as a result of injury or to get a few pity minutes as the seconds of the last game ebb away.

Here, we take a look at nine players who we still can’t really believe got on the pitch in the most important match of them all.

Christoph Kramer

We can’t really remember Kramer doing anything in the 2014 World Cup final – which is apt because neither does he.

After playing just once in all the games prior to the final against Argentina – as a 109th-minute sub in the round of 16 – Kramer was given the nod for the showpiece after Sami Khedira was injured in the warm-up.

But just 14 minutes in, he suffered a collision with Ezequiel Garay and was severely dazed. He was initially allowed to play on but later went up to the ref to ask if he was playing in the World Cup final. The ref told Phillip Lahm and Kramer was taken off in the 32nd minute.

“I can’t really remember much of the game,” he told the German newspaper Die Welt.

“I don’t know anything at all about the first half. I thought later that I left the game immediately after the tackle.

“I have no idea how I got to the changing rooms. I don’t know anything else. In my head, the game starts from the second half.”

The final was one of just 12 caps he won for his national team in a career that’s seen him win a grand total of zero club honours with Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Monchengladbach.

Edson Braafheid

The Dutch team that reached the 2010 final against Spain was not full of star names. While they all got a good number of caps, the likes of John Heitinga, Joris Mathijsen, Eljero Elia never exactly set the world alight at club level.

The unlikliest name to feature on the card for the final, though, is without a doubt that of Braafheid.

In summer 2010, he’d just come off the back of a pretty bad loan spell at Celtic, where he was dropped after Tony Mowbray, the manager who brought him in in February, was sacked in March.

Bert van Marwijk was undeterred and took him as part of the squad, bringing him on in the final. Braafheid’s most notable contribution was…