Fifa World Cup The Goalscorers

here are many things about soccer that make fans all over the world go crazy supporting it but the most important thing for most soccer fans is goals. Goals win matches and winning matches is what the Fifa World Cup is all about. There have been many great goals scored at World Cups throughout the years but the importance of being the top goal scorer in a tournament is an extremely prestigious award and Fifa recognises this by offering the Golden Boot to the tournaments highest goal grabber. No footballer has won this award twice but some of the most famous in world soccer have walked away from the tournament as the top marksmen. It is also interesting to note that the top goal scorer usually doesn’t play for the nation that wins the World Cup. Mario Kempes in 1978 and Ronaldo in 2002 bucked this trend but personal glory is obviously no guarantee of team success at the World Cup.

The top goal scorer at any individual World Cup is Just Fontaine from France, who in 1958 at the World Cup in Sweden scored 13 goals in six games. It is easy to work out the mathematics that this is an average of more than two goals per game and Fontaine scored 3 in his first match against Paraguay and then four in his last match, the third and fourth play off against Germany. Scoring in every match that France played at the tournament, Fontaine and his French team mates were unfortunate to come up against Brazil in the semi finals that were coming to the peak of their powers. Fontaine scored in the 9th minute to level the game at 1-1 but Brazil triumphed 5-2 with an emerging starlet scoring a hat-trick in 23 second half minutes. Fontaine was outshone by a player who would go onto eclipse virtually every other football who ever lived, Pele. The 1958 World Cup is probably most remembered for the debut of Pele on the world soccer scene but the 13 goals sees Fontaine standing third in the list of all time World Cup goal scorers, no mean feat for just one tournament.

Second top goal scorer was the West German goal grabber supreme Gerd Muller, who bagged 14 goals in two tournaments. Muller, otherwise known as ‘Der Bomber’ was the top scorer in Mexico 1970 when 10 goals, including two hat tricks saw Germany take third place after an agonising extra time Semi-final defeat to Italy. Muller bounced back in 1974 when West Germany hosted the tournament and won the trophy for the second time. Football had changed in the four years and goals were notably tighter to come by at the 1974 World Cup. Muller had to settle for four strikes this time around but given that the fourth strike was the one which gave West Germany a 2-1 victory over Netherlands, Muller would not have been upset about not being top goal scorer.

The only soccer player who has scored more goals at World Cups that Gerd Muller is Ronaldo from Brazil, who was top scorer when Brazil triumphed in 2002. Ronaldo has scored fifteen goals in a total of four World Cups but his tally of 8 in Japan and South Korea, with a goal in every game apart from the quarter final has been most impressive. There were major doubts about Ronaldo’s fitness and health amidst the controversy over his appearance at the France 1998 World Cup final but the two goals that defeated Germany 2-0 gave Ronaldo his place at the forefront of world soccer once again.

The road to the 2010 World Cup is well underway and you can guarantee that many players around the world will be carrying dreams of finishing the top goal scorer at South Africa. Winning the Golden Boot for World Cup goals is a tremendous achievement but most players would swap it all for their nation to life the World Cup.