The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup didn’t get off to the start that the US Women’s National Team was hoping for, but they do still have one major trophy to their name. Although they haven’t scored enormously in this year’s tournament yet, they’re still the record-holders for the highest-scoring game in World Cup history.
As of 2023, the record for the highest-scoring World Cup game in history has been unbroken for four years. It was set by the US at the 2019 Women’s World Cup, where the USWNT faced off against Thailand in the first game of the round-robin stage. By the end of the game, the US won by an astonishing 13-0 margin, with their 13 goals setting a record for the most goals scored in a World Cup match ever, in either the men’s or the women’s tournaments.
That same 13-0 victory for the USWNT also set a few other records along the way. For one, it became the highest-scoring game in the history of the USWNT (the previous USWNT record was set in 1991, when the US beat Chinese Taipei 7-0 in the inaugural women’s World Cup). Additionally, with five goals to her name, USWNT superstar Alex Morgan tied the record (previously set by soccer legend Michelle Akers) for the most goals scored by an individual player in a single World Cup game. Only one man has joined that elite club along with Akers and Morgan: Oleg Salenko, a Russian player who scored five goals in a match against Cameroon in the 1994 tournament.
Prior to this 2019 match, the record for the highest-scoring women’s World Cup game was an 11-0 German victory over Argentina in the 2007 tournament. The highest-scoring game of all time was previously set all the way back in 1954, when the Austrian men’s team beat their Swiss rivals 7-5 for a total of 12 goals scored. Those games now rank as the third and second-highest-scoring World Cup matches of all time, respectively. Alongside the 2007 Germany-Argentina game, there have also been three men’s World Cup matches that have hit the 11-goal mark:
- 1938: Brazil 6, Poland 5
- 1954: Hungary 8, West Germany 3
- 1982: Hungary 10, El Salvador 1
While it can be fun (at least for fans of the winning team) to watch a high-scoring game with a huge scoring gap, the fact that the 2019 record hasn’t been surpassed yet can actually be seen as a good thing for the sport as a whole. A huge goal differential can be an indicator of a large gap in skills and training, as it was with the lopsided matchup in 2019 between the US and Thailand. Smaller gaps and lower scores, on the other hand, indicate more even matchups, which in turn means that more teams are rising to the elite level. For girls and women around the world hoping to make their soccer dreams come true — and for the fans who love to support them — more competition and higher levels of play can only mean more incredible games to come.
Image Source: Getty / Marcio Machado