Throughout history hundreds of goals have been scored in the World Cups. The competition’s top scorer is Miroslav Klose, who has an impressive 16 goals. He is followed by other legends such as Ronaldo (15), Gerd Muller (14) and Just Fontaine (13), who also holds the record for the most goals in a single World Cup, scoring his 13 goals in a single edition: Sweden 1958.

On the other hand, the record for the most goals in the same game in the World Cups belongs to the Russian Oleg Salenko, who scored 5 goals in his team’s 6-1 victory over Cameroon in USA 1994. It will be interesting to see if in Qatar 2022 some player manages to break some of these impressive records.

The first goal in the World Cup

To find the first goal, we have to go back to the first World Cup in history, Uruguay 1930. Two games were played simultaneously: the United States vs. Belgium and Mexico vs. France. In other words, there was a good chance that in the opening games the first goal would also be scored. And this would come in the game between the French and Mexican: Lucien Laurent of France scored the first goal with which his team beat Mexico 4-1. Sadly, there are no videos of that goal.