Top 5 active brothers in football

#4 Lars and Sven Bender

The Bender brothers in action for Leverkusen

Unlike every other sibling on this list, Sven and Lars are twins who are almost identical and have each spent the entirety of their career in the German league.

Lars is the older of the two (by exactly 11 minutes) and he began his professional career with 1860 Munich in 2006 where he spent three years, before signing for Bayer Leverkusen in 2009.

He has since starred for the club at right-back and rose through the ranks to become captain of the team in 2015. In total, Lars Bender has made over 350 appearances for Leverkusen in all competitions, scoring 28 goals.

His brother is a midfielder who also began his career with 1860 Munich in the same year as Lars and together, they departed the club in 2009 but whereas his older brother went on to Bayer Leverkusen, Sven joined Borussia Dortmund and spent the next eight years with the club, playing a part in the successes enjoyed in this period.

In the summer of 2017, Bayer Leverkusen reunited the brothers eight years after their professional careers took different paths when they signed Sven Bender for the sum of €15m.

A piece of history was rewritten on matchday 5 in the Champions League when Bayer Leverkusen faced Lokomotiv Moscow, as it marked the first time in Champions League history that two sets of twins faced each other, with Lokomotiv's Aleksei and Anton Miranchuk coming up against the Bender brothers.

On the international scene, they are both German internationals, with Lars having won 19 caps with four goals, while Sven has seven appearances but is yet to get off the mark.