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List of FIFA World Cup top goalscorers
Men's FIFA World Cup top goalscorers From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A total of over 2,700 goals have been scored in matches across the 22 final tournaments of the men's FIFA World Cup, not counting penalties scored during shoot-outs.[1] Since the first goal scored by French player Lucien Laurent in 1930,[2] nearly 1,300 footballers have scored goals at the World Cup tournaments,[3] of whom 101 have scored five or more.

The top goalscorer of the inaugural competition was Argentina's Guillermo Stábile, with eight goals. Since then, only 25 players have scored more World Cup goals in total than Stábile did during the 1930 tournament. The first to do so was Hungary's Sándor Kocsis, scoring eleven in 1954. At the following tournament, France's Just Fontaine improved on this record, recording thirteen goals in just six matches. Gerd Müller then scored ten goals for West Germany in 1970, before breaking the overall record when he scored his fourteenth World Cup goal during West Germany's win in the 1974 final. Müller's record stood for more than three decades, until Ronaldo recorded fifteen goals between 1998 and 2006 for Brazil. The record is currently held by Germany's Miroslav Klose, who went on to score a record sixteen goals across the four consecutive tournaments he played between 2002 and 2014.
Of all the players who have played at the World Cup, only six have achieved an average of two goals or more per match played: Kocsis, Fontaine, Stábile, Russia's Oleg Salenko, Switzerland's Josef Hügi, and Poland's Ernst Wilimowski — the latter of whom scored four in his only ever World Cup match, played in 1938.[5] The top 101 goalscorers have represented 30 nations, with 14 players scoring for Brazil, and another 14 for Germany or West Germany. In total, 67 footballers came from UEFA (Europe), 30 from CONMEBOL (South America), and only four from elsewhere: Cameroon and Ghana from CAF (Africa), Australia from AFC (Asia) (formerly from OFC of Oceania), and the United States from CONCACAF (North/Central America).
Fontaine's thirteen goals in 1958 remains the record for the most scored in a single World Cup tournament. The players that came closest to this tally were Kocsis in 1954 (eleven goals), Müller in 1970 (ten goals), and Portugal's Eusébio in 1966 (nine goals). The top scorers with the fewest goals were from the 1962 tournament, when six players finished joint-top with just four goals each. Across the 22 tournaments of the World Cup, 31 footballers have been credited as the tournament top scorer, and no one has achieved this feat twice. Ten of these players scored at least seven goals in a tournament, while Brazil's Jairzinho in 1970 and Argentina's Lionel Messi in 2022 were the only footballers to record at least seven goals but still not finish as the tournament's top scorer. These 31 top goalscorers played for 20 nations, with the most (five) coming from Brazil. Another five came from other South American countries, with the remaining 21 coming from Europe.
In 2006, Ronaldo became the first player to score eight goals in knockout matches (excluding the third place play-off) at the World Cup, coming in his three tournaments for Brazil, a feat which would be equalled in 2022 by France's Kylian Mbappé.[6] Mbappé himself became the first player to score four goals in World Cup final matches: he netted one in the 2018 final followed by a hat-trick in the 2022 final. England's Geoff Hurst is the only other player to record a hat-trick in a World Cup final, doing so in 1966.
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Overall top goalscorers






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Top goalscorers for each tournament


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Goalscorers at multiple tournaments
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Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo is the only player to have scored in five World Cups. Four players (Uwe Seeler, Pelé, Miroslav Klose and Lionel Messi) have each scored in four tournaments, while another 35 have each scored in three.
In the table below players are listed in order of achieving their tallies.
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Top goalscorers in final matches
- Bold indicates winning final
- Parentheses indicates no goals scored
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See also
Notes
- Outside this list is Ernst Wilimowski of Poland, the player with the highest goals-to-games ratio in the World Cup. His ratio is 4.00 as he scored four goals in his only World Cup appearance, in 1938.[9]
- There was a controversy regarding the number of goals scored by Ademir in 1950 because of incomplete data from the final group round game against Spain, that ended in a 6–1 victory for Brazil. The first Brazilian goal was credited as own goal and the fifth was credited to Jair,[26] but both are now credited to Ademir.[27]
- FIFA initially credited Leônidas with eight goals in the 1938 tournament, but in November 2006, FIFA revised it to seven (he scored one additional goal in the 1934 tournament).[39]
- The two initial games of the 1930 FIFA World Cup (France vs Mexico[115] and United States vs Belgium[116]) were played at the same time, as seven players scored, with André Maschinot scoring two goals. The order in which these players are listed reflects the actual elapsed time in the games when their goals were scored.
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References
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