Reading And The World Cup: Past, Present And Future

03/27/2025 06:28 AM

Tyler Bindon had a successful international break, helping New Zealand quality for the 2026 World Cup.

With this week's news that Tyler Bindon's New Zealand had qualified for the 2026 World Cup, and it being the international break so there's nothing much recent to write about, I thought it'd be nice to pick out some past, present and even future World Cup stars that have graced the hallowed turf of the SCL.

Despite it being the finest football tournament that earth has to offer, and the rest of the universe too I suppose unless the Martians have taken up sport, there's a fair few head-scratchers for players who leave me wondering how they scammed their way onto the world's biggest stage.

We have had a few good ones over the years too, and plenty who lie somewhere in the middle, so let's look at some of the Royals who've competed for the Jules Rimet.

Let's start at the most recent World Cup in 2022, when we remarkably had three then-current players representing us in Qatar: those being being Junior Hoilett, Mamadou Loum and Baba Rahman.

The latter of those, Rahman, has had a very surprising career since leaving us. Reading fans who travelled to Sunderland away in February 2023 will remember his last-minute disaster-class to lose us the game, and for the rest of that relegation year he was pretty awful too.

Rahman still managed to start two of Ghana's group games in that World Cup as they exited at the earliest stage, and since then he's remarkably been doing pretty well, playing for PAOK in Greece. He's played 28 times in European competitions and 46 times in the league, winning a place in the team of the season in 2024.

Ex-Royal Saeid Ezatolahi was included in Iran's squad for that World Cup, as he had been in the previous one in 2018. In those two tournaments combined, the midfielder played more minutes than he ever did for Reading in the Championship, such was the extent of his injury struggles while on loan with us.

With Iran's 2-2 draw against Uzbekistan on Wednesday, in which Ezatolahi played 81 minutes, they secured qualification for the 2026 edition of the competition. That means he could be set to feature in his third World Cup in a row.

In Iceland's only World Cup qualification in their whole history in 2018, we had two representatives: one past and one present. These were of course Gylfi Sigurdsson and Jon Dadi Bodvarsson, the former of which is playing back in his homeland after a successful career in English football, while Bodvarsson is still knocking about in the EFL. He hasn't scored since bagging against us in January for Burton Albion.

Looking further back to 2010, Adam Federici travelled to Brazil with Australia while he was on Reading's books, but first-choice 'keeper Mark Schwarzer kept him out of the team for all of their group games.

Fellow ex-Royal Marcus Hahnemann was third choice for the USA, while soon-to-be Reading player Yakubu was part of the Nigeria squad. He scored a penalty against South Korea to win the Super Eagles their first and only point of the group stage campaign.

Hahnemann and Bobby Convey also featured for the USA's squad in 2006, and the latter was the first Reading player ever to play in a World Cup - in that year.

No Reading players past or present made it into any squads for the 2014 World Cup, although Pavel Pogrebnyak was named in the provisional squad for Russia by Fabio Capello.

What about for the future then? The first place to look is surely Michael Olise with France. He has to be nailed on to be in the squad, but such is the extent of the French talent factory and the strength of their attack that he may struggle a little to start every game.

Then of course Bindon with New Zealand. He's played a plethora of games for his country recently and is surely a starter in 2026.

If Wales manage to qualify like they did in 2022, I'd give Charlie Savage a great chance at making it in. With his potential, who knows what sort of level he will be playing at next summer? Hopefully with Reading in the Championship; maybe that's wishful thinking though. Even if he's still in League One, the Welsh FA had no qualms about calling up Chris Gunter in 2022 - then playing in League Two with Wimbledon - so a continuation of Savage's quality performances in the third tier should give him a chance.

Maybe if Jamaica qualify too, Coniah Boyce-Clarke would have a shot at going. I'd like to say the same for Jeriel Dorsett too, but Lee Bowyer's Monserrat aren't odds-on to make the tournament finals.

Looking at former players, Cesare Casadei will likely make it. A January move to Torino from Chelsea won him a call-up for Italy in this international break, although he hasn't played for the Azzurri's senior team yet.

There are the obvious ones in there such as Emiliano Martinez and Nathan Ake, while Matt Miazga - now of FC Cincinnati - is possibly in with a chance too.

Maybe the days of having loads of internationals jetting off every break to play senior football for their national teams are over for now, but it's good to have a few Berkshire representatives lined up for 2026.