Iconic World Cup moments

Across its history, the World Cup has produced many of football's most-remembered single moments. Each tournament generates candidates — moments that are replayed in highlights, used in coaching demonstrations, written into the memories of supporters, and folded into the wider history of the game. Some of those moments stay in the conversation; others fade. The ones below are among those that have stayed.

These moments are different from iconic matches because they are smaller in scope. A whole match becomes iconic when its result, its tactics or its drama are remembered together. A moment becomes iconic when a single instant — a goal, a save, an incident — is large enough to overshadow everything else around it. The two categories often overlap, since iconic matches tend to contain iconic moments, but a moment can be iconic even within an otherwise unremarkable match.

The earliest iconic World Cup moments tend to be about goals. Pelé scored a hat-trick in Brazil's 1958 semi-final against France at the age of seventeen, then scored two goals in the final against Sweden — including a chest-and-volley finish that introduced him to the wider football world. Just Fontaine's thirteen goals at the same tournament remain the record for most goals scored at a single World Cup. Uruguay's late winning goal at the Maracanã in 1950, by Alcides Ghiggia, is the iconic moment of an iconic match.

The 1966 World Cup final between England and West Germany at Wembley produced one of football's most-debated moments — Geoff Hurst's extra-time goal, which struck the underside of the crossbar and bounced near the line. The match referee consulted with linesman Tofik Bahramov and awarded the goal, although whether the ball had fully crossed the line was disputed at the time and has been studied ever since. England won the match 4-2 and the tournament. The question of whether the ball had crossed the line is one of the most-discussed single moments in football's history.

Brazil's run to the title produced several. Pelé's attempted shot from the halfway line in the group-stage match against Czechoslovakia, where he saw the goalkeeper off his line and tried to lob him from sixty yards, went narrowly wide but remains one of the tournament's most-replayed moments. Pelé's near-miss in the semi-final against Uruguay, where he ran on to a through ball and dummied the goalkeeper without touching the ball, is similarly remembered. Carlos Alberto's goal at the end of the 4-1 final win over Italy — at the end of a long passing move from the back — is widely treated as one of the iconic team goals in football's history.

One save from the same tournament is iconic in its own right. Gordon Banks's save from a Pelé header in the group-stage match between England and Brazil — at full stretch low to his right, scooping the ball over the bar from underneath — is widely cited as one of the most famous saves in World Cup history. The fact that England lost the match 1-0 has not affected the save's place in football's memory.

Roberto Baggio's missed penalty in the 1994 World Cup final between Italy and Brazil is one of the most-remembered moments in football. Baggio, Italy's leading player at the tournament, missed the decisive spot kick in the shoot-out by sending the ball over the bar, handing Brazil their fourth World Cup. The image of Baggio standing with his hands on his hips is one of the most-reproduced photographs in football's history. Zinedine Zidane's red card in the 2006 World Cup final, after a headbutt to Italy's Marco Materazzi in extra time, is similarly remembered, particularly because it ended Zidane's playing career.

Andrés Iniesta's winning goal for Spain in the 2010 World Cup final, scored in the 116th minute of extra time, gave Spain the World Cup at the end of a 1-0 win over the Netherlands. Mario Götze's goal for Germany in the 113th minute of the 2014 World Cup final against Argentina did the same. Kylian Mbappé's hat-trick in the 2022 World Cup final between Argentina and France — the first hat-trick in a World Cup final since Geoff Hurst in 1966 — was the central performance of one of the most dramatic finals the tournament has produced.

Cameroon's 1-0 win over reigning champions Argentina in the opening match of the 1990 World Cup is one of the most-remembered upsets in football. The match was played in Milan; Cameroon — written off before the tournament — beat Argentina with ten men and went on to reach the quarter-finals, becoming the first African nation to reach that stage. South Korea's run to the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup, including wins over Italy and Spain, was a similar story on a larger scale.

The 1950 World Cup contained one of football's most-cited upsets — the United States beating England 1-0 in a group-stage match in Belo Horizonte. The result is regularly referenced when surprising World Cup results occur. England, on their first World Cup appearance after rejoining FIFA, were expected to win comfortably; instead they lost to a side mostly made up of part-time and amateur players. The match has stayed in football's memory in a way the rest of England's 1950 tournament has not.

Iconic World Cup moments usually involve high stakes and a visible piece of football — a goal, a save, an incident — that can be reproduced and re-watched. The combination of the tournament's importance and the moment's clarity is what makes them last. The Maracanã decider, Banks's save, Maradona's two goals, the Hand of God incident, Iniesta's winner, Mbappé's hat-trick — all of these can be condensed into a few seconds of video and remembered for the rest of football's history. Other tournaments produce iconic moments, but the World Cup has produced an unusually large number of football's shared reference points.

There is also an element of timing. The moments that endure usually happen in matches with decisive outcomes — knockout stages, finals, deciders. A wonderful goal in a 5-0 group-stage match does not stay in the conversation in the same way as a much less impressive goal in a final. The World Cup's structure, with its small number of high-stakes matches, is part of why it produces such a high concentration of single moments that football continues to remember.