Aaron Lennon, Robinson, Carrick and Lee featured at 2006 World Cup
Tottenham Hotspur highlighted four players who featured at the 2006 world cup: Aaron Lennon, Paul Robinson, Michael Carrick and Young-Pyo Lee. England had three of them in the same squad, while Lee represented South Korea. The tournament gave Spurs a rare snapshot of its squad on two different international stages in Germany.
England's Spurs trio
Lennon’s path was the quickest. He earned his first senior cap in a World Cup warm-up against Jamaica on 3 June, then came on for David Beckham after 52 minutes in the quarter-final against Portugal.
England had already beaten Trinidad & Tobago 2-0 in Nuremburg, drawn 2-2 with Sweden and beaten Ecuador in the Round of 16 before the shoot-out loss to Portugal. Cristiano Ronaldo scored the decisive penalty after the 0-0 draw, ending England’s run with Tottenham players on the field at key moments throughout the tournament.
Robinson played every England game at the tournament and kept four clean sheets out of five, with 22 caps to his name by the start of the competition. Carrick also had a role in the knockout rounds, featuring against Ecuador and starting in England’s 1-0 win in the Round of 16.
Lee for South Korea
Lee’s World Cup story was different, but just as tied to Tottenham’s squad that summer. He had become the first South Korean player to pull on the Spurs shirt when he joined from PSV Eindhoven in the summer of 2005, and he started all three group games for South Korea against Togo, France and Switzerland.
South Korea beat Togo 2-1 after coming from behind, drew 1-1 with France and lost 2-0 to Switzerland, which left Lee and his side out of the knockout rounds. He had already been part of South Korea’s run to the semi-finals at the 2002 World Cup, and he went on to feature in his third World Cup in South Africa in 2010.
For Tottenham, the value in the list is simple: four players, three England appearances and one South Korea presence at the same World Cup. Lennon would go on to make 367 appearances for Spurs in a 10-year stint from 2005 to 2015, while Robinson had joined from Leeds in the summer of 2004 and Carrick later moved to Manchester United in 2006.
