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Karim Benzema, Gianfranco Zola, Teddy Sheringham and other players who peaked in their 30s

Most footballers produce their best football in the middle part of their careers, but plenty have peaked late.

It is fair to say that Karim Benzema is currently experiencing one of the truly great football renaissances of all time for Real Madrid.

Benzema scored his 38th goal of the season to break Chelsea hearts at the Bernabeu after having bagged a hat-trick in the first leg.

However, Benzema is not the only player to have peaked in their 30s. There are, in fact, a lot of good fine examples.

Antonio Di Natale

Where on earth was Antonio Di Natale hiding for most of his career?
In fact, if there is one archetypal 'peaked late player' then there is a very good case to be made for it being the Udinese legend.
Di Natale was always decent and he scored semi-regularly in Serie A in his 20s. No one thought he'd reach the level he eventually did, though.
From the ages of 32 to 37 his season goal returns were 29, 28, 29, 26 and 20. Before his 30th birthday, the closest he got to 20 goals in a season was the 18 he managed when playing in Serie B for Empoli.

Karim Benzema

Look, Karim Benzema has always been brilliant. Let's establish that right away. What he is doing right now is no fluke.

You don't play 600 games for Real Madrid unless you're special, but the thing with Benzema is that he always looked like he was a member of the supporting cast. He had players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and other Galacticos around him, so of course he was going to score goals.

On playing with Ronaldo, Benzema said: "When you play with a guy who scored 50 or 60 goals a season, of course, you are at the service of the player because he is someone who scored a lot.
"I had to adapt; I adapted. He left. So it was down to me to make a step forward and show that I could make the difference."
Recently Benzema has certainly stepped up and proven that he is very much now a star player in his own right.
Since turning 30 he has scored more than 120 goals in all competitions for Los Blancos (compared to 80 in the four seasons before that) and in the last year he has returned to the France team with devastating effect too.

Teddy Sheringham

Some say the secret of Teddy Sheringham's unerring ability to only seem to get better and better with age was down to his intelligence. Others say it was down to him never having any pace in the first place so never having any to lose.
Whatever it was, it was quite remarkable.
Sheringham was a good and dependable scorer for Tottenham, but it wasn't until, at the age of 30, he really started catching the eye at Euro 96.
That was when he stood out as someone who had developed an ability to not only contribute goals himself but also bring the best out of everyone else around him.

When Eric Cantona announced his shock retirement in 1997, Sir Alex Ferguson saw Sheringham as the man to fill that role and he did, after an admittedly slow start.

In the 1999 Champions League final, the 33-year-old Sheringham scored one injury time goal and assisted another to forever immortalise himself in football history.

He left Man Utd four years later, but went on to play in the Premier League until he was in his 40s thanks to further spells with Tottenham, Portsmouth and West Ham.

Gianfranco Zola

Gianfranco Zola is one of the Premier League's most beloved players after bringing his Italian flair to Chelsea in the 1990s, but it's often forgotten that he was already 30 years old when he arrived in England.
Zola had a good career in Serie A before all that, of course, starring for both Napoli and Parma.
His football only got even better in England, though, with him winning five major honours in a Chelsea shirt as well as providing some breath-taking moments of pure magic.

Peter Schmeichel

When Peter Schmeichel turned up at Manchester United he was a largely unknown name outside of Denmark. It was in an era when English clubs rarely looked abroad for talent and there was nothing like the TV coverage of global football we have today.

He was 28 years old when he signed for just over £500,000 - a fee that Sir Alex Ferguson would say made him the "bargain of the century". By his 30th birthday, he had won Euro 92 with Denmark and the Premier League with Man Utd.

He was far from his peak then, though, and just kept getting better and better into his 30s. By the time he left Old Trafford, he had been a key part in them winning everything, including five Premier League titles and the Champions League.

Henrik Larsson

Henrik Larsson was always highly thought of as a forward, but no one really expected him to become the player he did.
He was prolific in Sweden but struggled to make any kind of an impact in the Eredivisie for Feyenoord. That opened the door for the then 27-year-old to sign for Celtic.
Larsson did well in Scotland immediately, but it wasn't until he was approaching his 30s that he really started to rocket. He took his Celtic goalscoring to another level, hitting 53 goals in 50 games in the 2000/01 season.
That earned him a move to Barcelona and, later, Manchester United, which was a level far beyond anyone really expected him to go as a younger player.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

You feel like Zlatan Ibrahimovic himself would be furious to see himself on this list, just because he would be unwilling to accept he was not always unbelievably brilliant.
Of course, he was always a very talented player, and he won Serie A and La Liga in his 20s, but he definitely peaked after 30.
That was when he led a largely average AC Milan side to the Serie A title before heading to Ligue 1 to dominate with Paris Saint-Germain.
He was nominated for the Ballon d'Or four times in his 30s, including the only time he was placed in the final results. After PSG, he also kept winning trophies at Manchester United, including the Europa League which is, remarkably, the only European trophy he has won.
Maybe Zlatan Ibrahimovic always was brilliant, but he was most brilliant after his 30th birthday.

Laurent Blanc

Laurent Blanc was always a very talented defender, and he had been around the French national team for six years before hitting 30. He was never a stand-out player coveted by the top clubs in the world, though.

That all changed when the 31-year-old Blanc caught the eye of Barcelona. He only stayed for a year before joining Marseiile, but his best achievements were still ahead of him.

He was a pivotal part of the France team that won the World Cup in 1998, and he went on to star for Inter Milan, Manchester United, as well as winning the 2000 European Championships too, meaning all of his greatest career achievements came in his 30s.

Jamie Vardy

Jamie Vardy's story is so good that Hollywood want to make an actual movie about it.
Vardy was playing non-league football well into his mid-20s and didn't hit the Premier League until a couple of years after that, and he has certainly made up for lost time since.
In fact, since turning 30 he has scored more than 90 goals for Leicester, most of them in the Premier League.

Niall Quinn

It is fair to say that back in 1996 when Sunderland made Niall Quinn their then-record signing, it didn't create a huge amount of excitement within the fanbase.
Quinn was 30, never prolific, and had just been relegated with Manchester City. It wasn't a good look.
However, Quinn found another level entirely at Sunderland, forging a sensational partnership with Kevin Phillips and scoring goals in his own right. He also kept producing for the Republic of Ireland and, at 36-years-old, was a key part of their success at the 2002 World Cup before retiring as his country's record goalscorer.

In fact, Quinn was so good on one afternoon against Chelsea, that World Cup-winning defender Marcel Desailly was subsituted at half-time. Sunderland led 4-0, with Quinn scoring two, and Desailly wasn't injured - he just couldn't handle the Irishman.

Andrea Pirlo

Andrea Pirlo owns his own vineyard and he has himself often been likened to a fine wine. And, like a fine wine, he improved with age.

Pirlo was good for AC Milan in his 20s and was part of Serie A and Champions League-winning sides, as well as a World Cup-winning one with Italy. At the age of 31, Milan inexplicably decided he was a spent force and allowed him to join Juventus on a free transfer.

With Pirlo pulling the midfield strings, Juventus won the next four Serie A titles on the bounce. In fact, he did not have a single season in the black and white stripes that did not end in him lifting the Serie A trophy. He also starred for Italy.
Pirlo is a bit of an outlier here, as he won more before 30, but he was definitely a better player after.

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