World cup Legends

WORLD CUP LEGENDS
TOP 10…
SCORERS
They shoot, and they really
do score. Here we take a
look at the World Cup’s alltime
leading goalscorers
GABRIEL BATISTUTA
Aside from being a legendary player for
Fiorentina, a club he represented from
1991 to 2000, Batistuta was – until Lionel Messi
surpassed him – Argentina’s all-time top scorer. He
played in three World Cups, in 1994, 1998 and 2002,
scoring 10 goals in 12 matches – a hugely impressive
0.83 goals per game.
GARY LINEKER
Lineker made his England debut aged 23
years and 176 days in 1984, the same season
he scored 22 goals at Leicester City. He scored a
hat-trick in his irst World Cup tournament match
against Poland on 11 June 1986, and he was joint third
top scorer at Italia ’90. Of his 48 goals for England
throughout his career, 10 were at the World Cup.
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HELMUT RAHN
The most important of Rahn’s 10 goals in
10 World Cup tournament matches came
against Hungary in 1954 – the one that sealed
World Cup glory for West Germany. He also helped
his country to the semi-inals in the 1958 World Cup,
a tournament that saw him become joint second
goalscorer with Pelé on six goals.
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JÜRGEN KLINSMANN
Klinsmann was a constant ixture during the
1990s, with appearances at the 1990, 1994
and 1998 World Cups – irst for West Germany,
and then for the uniied German team. He scored
in each tournament, getting 11 goals in total. He also
picked up a World Cup winners’ medal in 1990, and
went on to manage Germany to third place in 2006.
SÁNDOR KOCSIS
As a member of Hungary’s Mighty Magyars
– the team which dominated international
football in the early-to-mid 1950s, Kocsis played in
just one tournament in 1954. But he scored all of his
11 international goals in Switzerland that summer, so
while he missed out on a winners’ medal, he was the
undisputed top goalscorer during the tournament.
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