World Cup: Records and Statistics

1. Records about the team

The first concern is the number of titles held by nations. In World Cup history, there were eight teams that lifted the famous trophy.

Brazil is the most successful national team in World Cup history, having claimed five titles. Looking at the excellent squad in Brazilian football history, it is not difficult to understand why they won more World Cups than anyone else.

With four victories each, Germany and Italy are the second-most prosperous nations in World Cup history. The Germans have also advanced to the most championship games, earning a spot in the grand finale no less than eight times.

Uruguay, France, and Argentina have all won two of the tournaments, while the figures for England and Spain are only one each.

Regarding the appearance of teams in the World Cup, it is not a surprise when the most successful team—Brazil—is also the one that participates in the most World Cups. Brazil is also the only team appearing at all 21 World Cups that no team can reach.

With four titles, Germany and Italy have featured in 19 and 18 World Cups, respectively, while Argentina has made 17 tournament appearances.

Mexico may be the team that has the most negative results. They appeared 16 times at the biggest tournament on the planet from 1930 to 2018 without winning a title. Other well-known football teams, such as Spain, France, and England, have qualified for the World Cup 15 times.

Brazil has the most world cup winning games in football history, which is an incomparable achievement. They have won 73/109 matches with a winning percentage of 67%, while in the same total number of matches, Germany has only 67 wins (61 %). Italy has registered 45 wins in 83 matches (54%), while Argentina has won 43 of their 81 games (53%).

2. Records about players

With 25 appearances, the monument, Lothar Matthaus (Germany), is the player who has participated in the most matches at the World Cups. Right behind this striker are Paolo Maldini (Italy) with 23 matches, Diego Maradona (Argentina), Wladislav Zmuda (Poland), and Uwe Seeler (Germany) with 21 matches.

Having the honor of joining the Tank 5 times at the 1982, 86, 90, 94 and 98 World Cups, Lothar Matthaus holds the record for the number of World Cups. He has the same record as "Senior" Antonio Carbajal from Mexico team; Gianluigi Buffon from the Italy team; and Rafael Márquez from the Mexico team.

About the age of joining in World Cup matches, the oldest player to attend a World Cup match is Essam El-Hadary(Egypt). He played against Arabic in Russia at the age of 45 years and 141 days.

Meanwhile, the youngest player to compete in the World Cup is Norman Whiteside of Northern Ireland. He featured in the match against Yugoslavia at the age of 17 years and 41 days.

The youngest player to attend in a final match of a World Cup is Pelé of the Brazil team. He played in the match against Sweden in the World Cup 1958 when he was 17 years and 249 days, while the oldest footballer having this opportunity was Dino Zoff from the Italian team in the matches against Germany in the World Cup 1982. At that moment, he was 40 years and 133 days.

3. Record about goals

Regarding the World Cup, the records of goals are also a topic that fans are always concerned about.

The player who has scored the most goals in the World Cup is Miroslav Klose of the German team. He is the author of 16 goals during his appearances in World Cups from 2002 to 2014.

The player with the most goals in a match in the World Cup is Oleg Salenko. Russian players scored five goals in the match against Cameroon in the World Cup 1994.

Pele is the youngest footballer to score in World Cup matches. He scored a goal in the match against Wales in the 1958 World Cup at the age of 17 years and 239 days. Roger Milla, on the other hand, is the oldest player, having scored in a match between Cameroon and Russia in 1994 when he was 42 years and 39 days old.

The shortest time to score a goal in the World Cup is 11 seconds.  It is scored by Hakan Şükür (Turkey) in the match against South Korea in World Cup 2002.

4. Record about spectators

Besides the records about the players, goals, and the achievements of teams, the record about the number of spectators is also an interesting number when finding out about World Cup records.

The highest number of spectators for a World Cup final match is 199,854. This number is recorded in the match between Uruguay and Brazil at Rio de Janeiro in the World Cup 1950, while the lowest is 300 in the World Cup 1930 match between Romania and Peru on July 14, 1930.

The largest number of spectators for a qualifying match was 162,764 in the World Cup 1978 match between Brazil and Colombia on March 9, 1977. While no one was present to witness the World Cup 2006 qualifying match between Costa Rica and Panama on March 26, 2005.

The World Cup 2022 will take place from November 20th to December 18th, 2022. We hope that the World Cup will bring fans exciting emotions; many records will be broken and many memorial stories will happen.