THE FIRST IN HISTORY

Sons playing together at World Cup like their fathers

At the 2026 World Cup, three teams featured players whose fathers had also been team-mates in one of the previous editions.
Specifically, these were the national teams of the USA, Argentina, and Norway.
In the tournament’s entire history prior to that, there had been only two such instances: the Forláns and Monteros for Uruguay, and the Anderssons and Linderoths for Sweden.
The Norwegian case (Haaland & Sørloth & Thorstvedt) is the first in history involving a trio of players; the other instances involve pairs.
In each of the pairs in question, fathers took the field together, and sons did so as well.
In the Norwegian trio, however, all three never appeared on the pitch simultaneously—neither in the first generation nor the second—but played in pairs in various combinations.
Details are provided in the table.
One additional, non-standard case (not included in the table) is worth mentioning. For José Vantolrá and Mario Pérez, who played for Mexico in the 1970 World Cup, their fathers also competed in the tournament, though in different years and for different teams: Luis Pérez played for Mexico in 1930, while Martín Vantolrá represented Spain in 1934.

	WORLD CUP	MULTIPLE FA	THER	&	SON SETS	PLAYING TOGE	THER
	Country/Edition	Fathers	Games		Country/Edition	Fathers	Games
1	Uruguay	Julio Montero	1		Uruguay	Paolo Montero	3
	1974	Pablo Forlán	3		2002	Diego Forlán	1
2	Sweden	Anders Linderoth	3		Sweden	Tobias Linderoth	3
	1978	Roy Andersson	3		2006	Daniel Andersson	1
3	USA	Claudio Reyna	4		USA	Giovanni Reyna	5
	2002	Gregg Berhalter	2		2026	Sebastian Berhalter	5
4	Argentina	Diego Simeone	5		Argentina	Giuliano Simeone	1
	1998	Pablo Paz	1		2026	Nico Paz	2
5	Norway	Gøran Sørloth	1		Norway	Alexander Sørloth	5
	1994	Alf-Inge Haaland	2		2026	Erling Haaland	5
		Erik Thorstvedt	3			Kristian Thorstvedt	2