At the age of 23, Nick Woltemade has the footballing world at his feet. It’s just that, standing 1.98m – or 6ft 6in if you prefer – he has to crane his neck pretty far to see it. Woltemade became the youngest player in Werder Bremen’s history in 2020 at the age of 17; in the meantime, he has continued working on his technical skill level to go with that remarkable height.
He then switched to Stuttgart for the 2024/25 season, notching 17 goals in all competitions – including the opening goal in the DFB Pokal final. That earned Woltemade a call-up for the German national team, for whom he impressed at the Nations League finals, before stepping back down to represent his country at the European Under-21 Championship in the summer of 2025 as an overage player.
Woltemade finished as the tournament’s top goalscorer, helping Germany to the final – where they were downed by England. Is it any wonder that the striker has been dubbed the Two Metre Messi? That moniker was created, somewhat accidentally, by Stuttgart captain Atakan Karazor. “He can control the ball, but at the same time he can also dribble like a 1.6 metre dribbler. He’s a player who is two metres tall, but he has technique like Messi.”
Woltemade has been linked with moves to Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Chelsea, so by the time you read this he may have switched to pastures new… bringing his unique blend of skill and physicality to the party. Of course, Woltemade isn’t the loftiest footballer to ever lace up his boots. In fact, he’s a veritable Average Joe compared to football’s tallest ever players.
Lucas Bergstrom
We wanted to compile a list of the tallest professional footballers – not just tall people that have played football. So everyone featured in this rundown has played at a high level (if you’ll pardon the pun)… shoutout though to all 6ft 10.5in of Simon Bloch Jorgensen, who previously campaigned in non-league football in England.
It’s only right that we order this list from ‘shortest’ to tallest, so we’ll start with a bunch of players that measure in at 6ft 9in. Being so tall must be helpful for a goalkeeper, whose long limbs means he can pluck shots out of the top corners of his net while dominating his penalty area when high balls come in.
Lucas Bergstrom was plucked as a teenager from TPS in his native Finland by Chelsea back in 2018, where he remained for four years. He never made a single first team appearance for the Blues, but did impress in a loan spell at Peterborough United in 2022/23.
His contract at Chelsea expired in the summer of 2025, at which point he headed to Spain to join Mallorca. At the age of 22, Bergstrom still has plenty of time to develop as a goalkeeper – he could yet prove to be the most successful giant in the beautiful game.
Other notable mentions in the 6ft 9in goalkeepers’ union include former Dutch Under-21 international Kjell Scherpen, Shakhtar Donetsk shot stopper Denys Tvardovskiy, Tomas Holy (of Ipswich Town and Carlisle United fame) and Tonny Brogaard (formerly of Doncaster Rovers).
Kyle Hudlin
🤝 We can confirm that forward Kyle Hudlin has today joined Burton Albion on loan for the remainder of the 2023/24 season.
💬 Comments from Sporting Director Mark Cartwright ⤵️
Best of luck, big man 🙌#htafc
— Huddersfield Town (@htafc) January 31, 2024
As a defender, having to mark a 6ft 9in striker must be just as daunting as coming up against a speed demon. Kyle Hudlin’s physical specifications caught the eye of Huddersfield Town, who snapped him up from non-league Solihull Moors in 2022. He only made nine appearances for the Terriers, having been shipped out on loan to Wimbledon, Burton Albion and Newport County.
Hudlin failed to turn his height into goals, so in 2025 he was released by Huddersfield. The 6ft 9in frontman has since pitched up at Vietnamese side Thep Xanh Nam Dinh. Being described as the ‘Chinese Peter Crouch’ might not overly sound like a compliment, but Yang Chengpeng was happy enough to embrace it when undertaking a trial at Bolton Wanderers in 2006 as a strapping 17-year-old – no doubt at the behest of then manager Sam Allardyce, who was known for his enjoyment of route one stylings.
It didn’t quite work out for the forward at the Trotters, who instead played the entirety of his senior career in his domestic league in China. Despite standing 6ft 9in tall Chengpeng wasn’t able to turn his aerial supremacy into prolific goalscoring, with a season’s best tally of six for Yinchuan Helanshan in 2015/16. He ended up retiring from the game, aged just 30, in 2019.
Kristof Van Hout
It would take precision of some magnitude to score past 6ft 10in goalkeeper Kristof Van Hout. And he’s played at a high level as a result, with stints in his native Belgium at the likes of Standard Liege, Genk and his hometown club of Lommel. A winner of the Belgian Cup with Genk in 2013, Van Hout has made more than 100 first-team appearances in his career at a high level.
Paul Millar
The honour of being the tallest outfield player in professional football history goes to Paul Millar. He was one of the few giant forwards that has been able to translate his physical dominance into goals, notching 56 goals in 65 appearances in two spells at Elgin City.
Sadly, Millar suffered a torn ACL while playing for Elgin and never really returned to his previous level, attempting several attempts to resurrect his career in non-league football while working for the RAF. However, he’ll always be fondly remembered at Elgin City – for his goals just as much as his incredible height.
Konstantin Veretynskiy
A new player has entered the conversation. Konstantin Veretynskiy is a young 19-year-old goalkeeper that turns out for Belarusian Premier League side Slavia Mozyr. He stands, depending on who you believe, either 6ft 10in or 6ft 10.5 inches tall. We’ve put him in as the tallest player in world football in our list for one good reason: at 19, he still has time to grow!
