World Cup Scoring

OK, here is a short post that was inspired by the 7-0 drubbing Portugal gave North Korea this morning. Anyone who has watched even one soccer match will know this is an uncommon occurrence, let alone in the World Cup. Generally matches are more evenly played. It may surprise some people though that this was not the biggest blowout in world cup history, actually Hungary has twice won World Cup matches by 9 goals, once with the great team of 1954 and again in 1982, while Yugoslavia also won a match by 9 goals in 1974.

Here are a few more statistics that are interesting. Many people, especially those who watched the 2006 cup will know that Ronaldo has the record for most goals in the World Cup history at 15. A related statistic is that he is one of two people to score 3 times in three different World Cup tournaments, the other person is Jurgen Klinsmann, illustrating their relevance over time for their squads.

There have been three times that a player has scored 10 or more goals during a World Cup though this hasn't happened since 1974. The first time was Sandor Kocsis (11)one of the great Hungarians of 1954, Just Fontaine (13) of France in 1958 and Gerd Muller (10) of West Germany in 1974.

There are only 12 players ever who have scored 10 or more goals in World Cup History. In addition to the players mentioned already, Pele, Miroslav Klose, the Peruvian great Teofilo Cubillas, Gabriel Batistuta, Gary Lineker, Grzegorz Lato and Helmut Rahn.