Remember the scorelines? World Cup’s biggest wins in history
The one-sided clash pitting Germany’s 7-1 steamrolling of Curacao in a Group E match is the biggest win margin of the 2026 edition so far.
Here are some of the scoreline-defying results that have been recorded at the World Cup stage.
Hungary 10-El Salvador 1 (1983)
You might also like
Hungary became the only side to score 10+ goals in a single men’s World Cup game, winning 10-1 against El Salvador as per Opta Stats.
The eventual winning margin of nine goals also became a joint World Cup record to date
Hungary 9- South Korea 0 (1954)
As no strangers to huge World Cup wins, the Hungary generation of 1950 served another staggering score line 28 years earlier against South Korea.
The team comprising the legendary Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis, Nándor Hidegkuti, Zoltán Czibor, József Bozsik, and Gyula Grosics under coach Gusztav Sebes was simply unstoppable.
The tournament favourites in Switzerland opened their campaign on a high, hitting nine past the sorry Koreans.
Puskas netted twice, but it was Kocsis who exploded out of the blocks to etch his name in the record books. He scored a hat-trick in this game and then went on to bag four in Hungary’s 8-3 group-stage win over West Germany to become the first player to score multiple hat-tricks in a single World Cup.
Yugoslavia 9- Zaire 0 (1974)
First-time qualifiers Zaire endured the wrath of the Yugoslavian team, which was keen on qualifying from their group in the 1974 edition.
Yugoslavia raced into a three-goal lead in the first 20 minutes, prompting Zaire’s manager, Blagoje Vidinić, to substitute his goalkeeper.
A 5-foot-4 Dimbi Tubilandu entered the fray and went on to concede inside the first minute of coming on. He went on to pick the ball from his net five more times.
Sweden 8- Cuba 0 (1938)
The unforgettable quarterfinal pitting Sweden and Cuba is technically the biggest World Cup win to take place outside the group stage, with the competition not encompassing the group stage in 1938.
Gustav Wetterström and Harry Andersson helped themselves to a hat-trick each in the clash at Antibes. This fixture remains the only one in World Cup history where two players from the same team scored a hat-trick in the same game.
Germany 8- Saudi Arabia 0 (2002)
The most recent huge win from a World Cup edition came in 2002 when Germany whitewashed Saudi Arabia 8-0.
Miroslav Klose was the star of the match in what went down as the biggest win in a World Cup game in the 21st century.
Klose went on to claim more history, becoming the only the second player in World Cup history to score a hat trick of headers in a single World Cup game, after Tomas Skuhravý did it for Czechoslovakia against Costa Rica in World Cup ’90.
He is one of 13 players to score a hat-trick on their World Cup debut, but no player has managed to do it since Klose in June 2002
