Tottenham Hotspur has looked back at four of its players who reached the 2006 World Cup in Germany, with Aaron Lennon among the most striking names because he was only 19 when he won his first senior cap. Lennon had arrived at Spurs in the summer of 2005, then came on in a World Cup warm-up against Jamaica on 3 June before being used again as England chased the knockout rounds.
The timing matters because the 2026 FIFA World Cup is about to begin, and Tottenham is using the moment to revisit the club's place on football's biggest stage, which it has called the greatest football show on earth. For Lennon, that journey was fast and brief in Germany. He was a late substitute as England beat Ecuador in the Round of 16, then replaced David Beckham on 52 minutes in the quarter-final against Portugal, where England were held 0-0 before losing on penalties.
Paul Robinson was already established as England's first choice after joining Tottenham from Leeds in the summer of 2004, and he played every match of the tournament. Robinson kept four clean sheets in five World Cup games, a return that underlined how far he had come in a season where he had secured the No. 1 shirt by October after his move to north London. Michael Carrick was also in Sven Goran Eriksson's squad for Germany after Tottenham's run to fifth place in the Premier League in 2005/06, but he only featured against Ecuador and started the Round of 16 win alongside Robinson.
The other Spurs link came through Young-Pyo Lee, who became the first South Korean player to wear the Tottenham shirt when he joined from PSV Eindhoven in the summer of 2005. Lee started all three of South Korea's group games, a campaign that opened with a 2-1 win over Togo, continued with a 1-1 draw against France and ended in a 2-0 loss to Switzerland. He had already been part of South Korea's run to the semi-finals at the 2002 World Cup, and he would go on to feature in his third finals in South Africa in 2010.
There is a reason this list feels selective. Tottenham is not trying to map every World Cup appearance in its history; it is spotlighting players whose careers linked the club to one tournament in one summer, and the names it has chosen show both range and reach. England went from the round of 16 to a penalty shootout exit against Portugal, South Korea moved through a difficult group, and Robinson emerged as a reliable figure throughout. With the 2026 tournament now close, the club's 2006 cast offers a neat reminder that Spurs players have long been part of the competition's defining moments.
