LUSAIL, Qatar — It’s been a feature of this World Cup so far how old so many of the center forwards are, from Enner Valancia (33) to Robert Lewandowski (34), Olivier Giroud (36) to the new German hero Niclas Füllkrug, who became the second-oldest German outfield debutant (albeit at just 29) when he came on against Spain. There are exceptions, of course, most notably 23-year-old Kylian Mbappé—although he is not really a striker in the old-fashioned sense—but modern academies, perhaps, no longer turn out number nines in bulk.
But no countries perhaps exemplify that trend more than Portugal and Uruguay.