International Football Matches With the Biggest Score Difference

Many football fans have complained about the current state of the sport, from the loss of the "number 10", the playmaker, to more defensive strategies employed by coaches. This has a major impact on the way football matches are played - and the results, of course. Today, top-flight football has fewer goals and less action, in general, than in the past, and this has an impact on everything from football betting promotions to the satisfaction of the fans.

A match with many goals is fun and exciting for the viewers. Imagine, then, the feeling of fans watching these international matches with a number of goals this high!

Hungary - El Salvador, 10-1 (FIFA World Cup, 1982)

Hungary is famous for its Golden Team that beat every major team in Europe in the 1950s. The quality of Hungarian football started to decline after that, but this doesn't mean the country didn't have amazing footballers ever since. Take the squad that played in the 1982 FIFA World Cup, for example - while they didn't get past the group stage, they certainly put on a great show for their fans.

In their second game in the Group Stage, Hungary totally devastated El Salvador on the turf. The Magyars won 10-1, with László Kiss scoring a hat-trick, and five more players scoring in the match - two of them twice.

Indonesia - Philippines, 13-1 (Tiger Cup, 2002)

Indonesia and the Philippines have a long-running rivalry that started at the 1958 Asian Games when the former beat the latter 5 to 2. Indonesia won most of the matches played by the two teams ever since, with the biggest beating they gave the Filipino team happening at the 2002 edition of the Tiger Cup.

The Filipino team was humiliated on the turf: they scored once and conceded 13 goals in the same match.

Japan - Philippines, 15-0 (Summer Olympics qualifiers, 1967)

Not that the Philippines national teams wouldn't be used to big defeats. In the summer of 1917, the Philippines national team beat Japan 15-2 at the Far Eastern Games. It took Japan 50 years but they took their revenge: during the Summer Olympics qualifiers in 1967, the Japanese national team totally destroyed the Filipino squad in a 15-0 victory.

This was the Philippines' worst defeat in international football, breaking their previous (negative) record defeat suffered at the 1962 Asian Games.

Tonga - Australia, 0-22 (2002 FIFA World Cup qualification)

The Socceroos may not have any World Cup trophies to show off, but their performance on the turf is memorable, to say the least. Like their World Cup qualifier played against the Tonga squad in 2002 that they won 22-0.

But this was not the biggest victory of the Socceroos in the 2002 World Cup qualifiers. It came two days later:

Australia - American Samoa, 31-0 (2002 FIFA World Cup qualification)

The victory by the biggest margin, not just for the Socceroos but for football as a whole (and perhaps the most unbalanced international football match ever) was achieved by the Australian national team on April 11th, 2001, when the Socceroos beat American Samoa 31 to nil.

The two outstanding goalscorers of the match were David Zdrilic, who scored 8 of the 31 goals, and Archie Thompson who scored a whopping 13 goals, good enough for the all-time goalscoring record for an international match.

Of course, the unbalance that made this score possible was since addressed.