With Casemiro inspiring Man Utd and Thiago Silva enjoying a similarly bright Indian summer, the greatest post-30 Premier League players are under threat.
The age of the player at the time of his Premier League debut is in brackets. Sorry to Henrik Larsson.
10) Youri Djorkaeff (33 years, 11 months, 14 days)
Perhaps he was embellishing the truth when he suggested that Liverpool head coach Gerard Houllier and Man Utd manager Sir Alex Ferguson sought his services upon a bitter parting of the ways with Kaiserslautern in early 2002. But Youri Djorkaeff, who scored for the Bundesliga club in the UEFA Cup semi-finals less than a year earlier, did indeed find himself in the north-west of England during the twilight of a wonderful career.
A move to Bolton was designed to ensure a fairy-tale end to almost 10 years as an international that saw him and France dominate both continent and globe. He needn’t have bothered – the Frenchman started the opening game of a disastrous 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan and played just nine minutes thereafter – but the irony is that it resuscitated an ailing club career. Djorkaeff rose to the challenge of keeping Bolton up in his first few Premier League months, then again in 2002/03. Finishes of 16th and 17th preceded a memorable last season towards the top, scoring 10 times to secure eighth place and a League Cup final as that iconic team approached its zenith, thanks in no small part to a player who made his professional debut when Bolton were languishing in the third tier.
9) Jurgen Klinsmann (30 years, 21 days)
As English football continues to struggle to detach itself from 1966, 1986 and 1990, consider how fresh any sense of injustice – and how high this country’s collective horse was – in 1994. Jurgen Klinsmann, whose unseemly dive and post-tackle flourish to adorn Pedro Monzon with the first red card in World Cup final history, was not welcomed on these shores with open arms by anyone other than Alan Sugar.
The story of how he disarmed a suspicious press at his first conference has been oft-told. What followed was a destructive season to win not only the hearts of the Tottenham fanbase but of the entire nation, 29 goals earning a move to Bayern Munich and then Monaco before his triumphant return as the adopted prodigal son helped stave off relegation in 1998. Klinsmann dived head-first into the sunset, retiring on the cusp of his 34th birthday with six goals in his final three Tottenham games, his…
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