who has scored the most goals in world cup soccer history
FIFA World Cup top goalscorers The top goalscorer of the inaugural competition was Argentina's Guillermo Stábile with eight goals. Since then, only 22 players have scored more at all the games played at the World Cup than Stábile did throughout the 1930 tournament. The first was Hungary's Sándor Kocsis with eleven in 1954. At the next tournament, France's Just Fontaine improved on this record with 13 goals in only six games. Gerd Müller scored 10 for West Germany in 1970 and broke the overall record when he scored his 14th goal at the World Cup during West Germany's win at the 1974 final. His record stood for more than three decades until Ronaldo's 15 goals between 1998 and 2006 for Brazil. Germany's Miroslav Klose went on to score a record 16 goals across four consecutive tournaments between 2002 and 2014. Only two other players have surpassed 10 goals at the World Cup: Pelé with 12 between 1958 and 1970 for Brazil, and Jürgen Klinsmann with 11 between 1990 and 1998 for Germany.
FIFA World Cup top goalscorers Fontaine holds the record for the most goals scored at a single tournament, with 13 goals in 1958. The players that came closest to this record were Kocsis in 1954, Müller in 1970 and Portugal's Eusébio in 1966, with 11, 10 and 9, respectively. The lowest scoring tournament's top scorer was in 1962, when six players tied at only four goals each. Across the 21 editions of the World Cup, 30 footballers have been credited with the most tournament goals, and no one has achieved this feat twice. Nine of them scored at least seven goals in a tournament, while Brazil's Jairzinho became the only footballer to score at least seven goals without being the top goalscorer of that tournament in 1970. These 30 top goalscorers played for 19 nations, the most (five) for Brazil. Another five came from other South American countries, with the remaining 20 coming from Europe. Excluding the 2010 edition, all the top tournament scorers won the Golden Boot.