Has a player been older than both managers in a football match?

“At the Super Bowl, there was a player on the field who was older than both head coaches (Andrew Whitworth, the Rams’ 40-year-old offensive tackle),” tweets Alex G. “Has this ever happened in a professional football match, excluding player-managers?”

Chai from Atlanta starts us off with a popular answer: “Yokohama FC’s Kazuyoshi Miura (born in 1967) is in his 50s and was still going strong in Japan’s J2 League until last season. So it’s no wonder that when he made a brief appearance against Ehime FC on 24 November 2019, he was older than his coach, Takahiro Shimotaira (born in 1971) and the opposition’s Kenta Kawai (born in 1981). In Serie A, when Juventus’ ageless legend Gianluigi Buffon (born in 1978) played against Sassuolo on 12 May 2021, he was also older than both coaches, Andrea Pirlo and Roberto De Zerbi. Both of them were born in 1979.”

Sam Tomlinson goes in deep on Our League, pointing out that nobody in the Premier League this season has qualified, but that in the Championship, Wayne Rooney and Russell Martin – the respective Derby and Swansea managers – and Poya Asbaghi, of Barnsley, are all younger than Rams player Curtis Davies, who has featured against the Swans and Tykes. In League One, Cambridge’s Wes Hoolahan, 40 in May, twice qualified this season, having been younger than Mark Bonner, his manager, and Kieran McKenna of Ipswich and Liam Manning of MK Dons … who is himself eight months younger than Dean Lewington, who has been the oldest participant in three matches. In League Two, Kevin Ellison of Newport, 43 last month, has qualified twice; he’s older than his own manager, James Rowberry, Joey Barton of Bristol Rovers and Ben Garner of Swindon. Ellison has done the same in the Carabao Cup and EFL