Over 20 goals in a Football Match?🤔
Source: Pexels
So I bet it is no news the humiliation Barcelona faced at the hands of the German machines, Bayern Munchen. A whopping 8-2 victory is a hard fall to take for even an average team, but these were the kings of the Spanish league including the G.O.A.T himself, Lionel Messi.
Well about a year ago, an English club, Watford suffered a similar fate at the hands of Manchester City. It was a 9-0 victory won in the last season's Premier League matches; on 21 September 2019 precisely. This was scored by D. Silva 1', Agüero 7' (pen.), Mahrez 12', B. Silva 15', 48', 60', Otamendi 18', De Bruyne 85'.
Well, this sparked my curiosity and sent me searching for the official football match with the highest number of goals. Now according to Planet of Football, the average goals scored in a football match is 2.92 goals. This is very low compared to the number of goals you'll see here today.
Note that this is only for official football matches or else the highest would be my football team in high school where we scored 99 goals against the opponent... Just kidding.😉
The first place for this goes to Australia.
Yup, Australia. Now the Australians aren't even internationally as "football" people. One would naturally think about the Germans first apparently, then the Spanish, the English, the Africans, maybe even the French before the Australians.
Well, Australia proved the world wrong in a qualifying match for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, or did they?
First of all, you should know that this match was against American Samoa and the Samoan team had a lot of issues with getting to the match. The American Samoa team were troubled by passport issues and the members of their original 20-man senior team were unable to get passports to come for the match. Now I wonder how or why on earth that would happen but then it did.
Only one member of the original 20-man senior team was able to play the match and that was even their goalkeeper Nicky Salapu.
The American Samoa team were also unable to call their under-20 players because most of them were involved in high school exams at the time of the match; another "how did that happen?" moment.
Because of this, they were forced to draft in their youth players, including three 15-year-old players, to put together a makeshift team with an average age of 18. According to team manager and Football Federation American Samoa vice-president Tony Langkilde, some of the Samoan players had never played a full 90-minute game before the match with Australia.
Well, with these kinds of issues, I think they were at their all-time low and nobody expected them to do well but it was still a shock when the team lost to Australia by over 30 goals. Yup, you heard that right, 31 goals precisely (10 times 3 and then plus a little 1).
That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that the American Samoa team did not score a single goal against Australia.
As you can see from the goals scored in the match, 'Archie Thompson' scored a whopping 13 goals in a single match. I mean that was an average of 1.4 goals every ten minutes. No words man... just no words.
Boutsianis - 10', 50', 84'
Thompson - 12', 23', 27', 29', 32', 37', 42', 45', 56', 60', 65', 85', 88'
Zdrilic - 13', 21', 25', 33', 58', 66', 78', 89'
A. Vidmar - 14', 80'
Popovic - 17', 19'
Colosimo - 51', 81'
De Amicis - 55'
By AsianFC from Australia - Melbourne Victory: Archie Thompson, CC BY 2.0, Link
This record sparked a lot of controversies and even Australia's manager Frank Farina criticised the qualification format after the match. Archie Thompson also agreed with some.
"Breaking the world record is a dream come true for me; that sort of thing doesn't come along every day. But you have to look at the teams we are playing and start asking questions. We don't need to play these games."Archie Thompson
31 frickin' - 0
Australia's 31–0 win broke the record for the largest winning margin in an international match. The previous record was, guess what?
Still Australia's 22–0 win over Tonga.
Did I say "That's not the interesting part" earlier? Well, this is still not the interesting part.
The interesting part is that this 22-0 record was made in the same competition with the all-time high 31-0 record and the match was played just two days earlier. How did Australia get so lucky?
Another fun fact for you. American Samoa closed their qualification campaign with a 5–0 loss to Tonga. Yes, the same Tonga that lost 22-0 to Australia.
The American Samoa team finished bottom of the groups with a −57 goal difference in four matches, without scoring a single goal at all in the qualifications. Not a single goal.
What are your thoughts? Let me know!
