World Cup Athletes Who Look Completely Different Today

Every four years, the greatest soccer (or football, if you're from pretty much anywhere other than the United States) players from across the globe join up with their fellow superior athletes from their home nations and hit the pitch to compete for the FIFA World Cup. While most are stars in various soccer club leagues around the world, the chance to play (and excel) for the national team is a shot at glory that can also propel an athlete to international stardom as billions of fans around the world watch them do their thing.

But after the $20 million trophy has been hoisted and these glorious athletes have gone on their victory tours, players return to their teams, eventually retire, and settle into their lives. Where are these legends today? We're so glad you asked. Here's an update on what happened to notable competitors of World Cups past — male and female — and what they look like today.

The U.S. men's national soccer team has never done that well in the World Cup. In 2002, the squad advanced to the quarterfinals, which is the only time it got past the round of 16. If you're a patriotic American soccer fan, you might want to check out the FIFA Women's World Cup, where the USA has won the whole thing three times. In the 1999 final at the Rose Bowl in Southern California, Brandi Chastain scored on the fifth kick in a penalty shootout, clinching the title for team USA. In celebration, she fell to her knees and ripped off her jersey, fists clenched in triumph. That title — and the famous photograph of Chastain being awesome — gave women's soccer a big popularity boost in the U.S.

Off the playing pitch, Chastain has stayed close to the game. She's coached at almost every level, including assisting with women's soccer at Santa Clara University, girls teams for the Olympic Development Program, the boys team at a private Catholic high school in San Jose, Calif., and her son's youth soccer squads.

In 2018, she made news again when she was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. At the ceremony, a plaque of Chastain that looked nothing like Chastain was revealed...and went viral. The person on the plaque looks like some combination of Gary Busey and Eleanor Roosevelt. Chastain looks a lot different today, but not  that different.

Cobi Jones was another oft-covered member of the 1994 American World Cup squad. He was young, good-looking, media savvy, and rocked some pretty awesome dreadlocks. It didn't matter that he didn't score any goals for team USA in its World Cup campaign (although he's played in more international matches than any American ever). He had a memorable image and capitalized quick. MTV hired the affable athlete to host Mega-Dose, a magazine show about health issues facing Gen-Xers — topics like vegetarianism, the safety of club drugs, and tattoo hygiene.

After the World Cup hype died down, Jones joined Major League Soccer and played 12 seasons with the Los Angeles Galaxy. He stuck around as an assistant coach for the team for two years, and at the time of this writing, he's still with the club serving as its TV analyst. In 2011, he was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Mia Hamm is probably the best American soccer player of all time — among women and men. She dominated the sport for years and has been a champion at every turn. After joining the women's national team at the age of just 15, she went on to win the Women's World Cup in 1991 and 1999, win a gold medal in the Olympics with Team USA in 1996 and 2004, and win four straight college championships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She once held the record for most goals scored in international play. In 2004, the year she retired from playing, she was the only American woman named to FIFA's list of the greatest living soccer players. Not too shabby.

Hamm has focused on her personal life in recent years, settling down with her husband, Boston Red Sox legend Nomar Garciaparra, to raise a family. She also formed the Mia Hamm Foundation, a bone marrow research organization created in honor of her late brother, who died from a rare blood disease. However, she can't totally stay away from the sport — she co-owns the Los Angeles Major League Soccer club.

Along with Pelé, Maradona is easily one of the best soccer players of all time. (FIFA co-awarded its player of the 20th century prize to both guys.) The 5'5" midfielder and striker, aka El Pibe de Od ("The Golden Boy") played in four World Cup tournaments for his home nation of Argentina. In 1986, he captained his team to a win over the dominant squad from West Germany and was named the best player of the tournament. That honor was probably because of a goal he scored in the semifinal against England — he dribbled a good 60 yards past five opponents in what was named the "Goal of the Century" by FIFA in 2002.

Maradona retired from international play after the 1994 World Cup and played for various squads around Europe until 1997, at which point he got into coaching, including for the Argentine national squad. (Notable moment: Maradona's players made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup.) The Golden Boy headed to the 2018 World Cup in Russia as an analyst, where he was photographed crying when his beloved Argentina lost in a shocking upset to Croatia in the group stage.

In the 1970s, Platini became one of the most accomplished French soccer players of all time. Playing for Nancy, he led the team to the Ligue 2 championship in 1975 and almost scored a medal with the French national team in the 1976 Olympics. A couple of league titles with Italian team Juventus were bookended by two straight World Cup semifinals berths, in 1982 and 1986. Soon thereafter, he coached the French national team and then joined the World Cup organizational board.

Platini has known soccer glory, and he's also known soccer disgrace. In 2018, he unabashedly admitted that when he was part of the 1998 World Cup organization committee, he sort of helped rig it. "France-Brazil in the final, it was the dream of everyone," Platini told a radio show on France Bleu Sport. And so, the committee conspired to arrange the teams in the tournament's initial group stage to increase the likelihood of that pairing, and indeed, the two teams didn't meet until the final.

Was Platini punished by FIFA in any way for this admission? Nope — when he came clean he was already in the middle of a four-year ban from soccer (reduced from eight) after it was discovered that he'd received a secret, illegal payment (aka bribe).