Mbappe Breaks World Cup Goals Record With England Brace

The Kylian Mbappe World Cup goals record is now the outright record, and it arrived in the most chaotic game of the tournament. France’s captain scored twice in a 6-4 defeat to England in Saturday’s third-place play-off in Miami to reach 22 career World Cup goals, moving one clear of Lionel Messi, who had taken the all-time mark off Miroslav Klose only four weeks earlier. Mbappe is 27 years old and has needed just 22 World Cup matches to get there.

The two goals also lifted him to 10 for this tournament and back to the top of the Golden Boot standings, although Messi can still answer that in Sunday’s final against Spain. For the full story of how the previous record fell, see our report on Messi breaking the World Cup goals record against Austria.

How Mbappe broke the World Cup record

Nothing about the afternoon looked like a record-breaking one for the first 45 minutes. France, the 2018 winners, were 4-0 down at half time to a much-changed England side, their worst start to any match at a World Cup, with Bukayo Saka scoring a hat-trick.

Mbappe pulled one back three minutes after the restart to draw level with Messi on 21 career World Cup goals. Bradley Barcola made it 4-2 six minutes later, and in the 66th minute Mbappe struck again to stand alone at the top of the all-time list on 22, with France suddenly only 4-3 behind. Ousmane Dembele added a fourth, his sixth World Cup goal, but England held on and won 6-4 to take third place.

It was a fittingly strange setting for a landmark. Mbappe had said before kick-off that this would be his last match of the tournament, France having lost 2-0 to Spain in the semi-final in a game where he was kept off the scoresheet for only the second time all summer.

Most World Cup goals of all time: the full ranking

Mbappe now sits one clear of Messi and six clear of Klose, whose 16 had stood as the record from 2014 until June this year. The table below is correct going into Sunday’s final, in which Messi can still move back level or beyond.

Correct before the 2026 final between Spain and Argentina.

Twenty-two goals in twenty-two games

The raw number is one thing, the rate is another. Mbappe has scored 22 World Cup goals in 22 appearances at three tournaments, having turned 27 only last December. Messi’s 21 came across six tournaments and two decades, from a first goal against Serbia and Montenegro in 2006 to a hat-trick against Algeria in the opening week of this competition.

Three of Mbappe’s 22 have come from the penalty spot, leaving him on 19 from open play. That is also a record, and it is a mark he had previously shared with Messi, who is on 17.

His 10 goals at this tournament make him the first player to reach double figures at a single World Cup since Gerd Muller managed 10 in Mexico in 1970. Just Fontaine’s 13 in 1958 and Sandor Kocsis’ 11 in 1954 remain out of reach. Having scored eight in Qatar, Mbappe also becomes the first player to score at least eight goals at back-to-back World Cups.

The Golden Boot goes down to the final

Mbappe and Messi went into the last weekend of the tournament level on eight goals each. The brace in Miami put Mbappe on 10 and gave him the outright lead, but Messi has one game left.

FIFA separates players tied on goals by assists first, then by minutes played. On the assist counts going into the play-off, Messi held a narrow advantage, which means two goals in the final would be enough to draw level on 10 and take the award on the tiebreaker, while three would settle it outright. Mbappe won the Golden Boot in 2022 with eight goals; Messi, for all his medals, has never won it.

The records Mbappe has taken this summer

The all-time scoring mark is the headline, but it is not the only line in the ledger. Across the past five weeks Mbappe has:

become the outright all-time leading goalscorer at the men’s World Cup with 22;
set a new record for non-penalty World Cup goals with 19;
overtaken Olivier Giroud as France’s all-time leading scorer in all competitions, with his second goal against Senegal in the opener;
passed Just Fontaine’s 13 to become France’s leading World Cup scorer;
moved level with, and then beyond, Hugo Lloris for the most World Cup appearances by a French player.

For the wider historical picture, our ranking of the top 10 all-time World Cup goalscorers sets out how the previous generations of record holders built their totals, and the full tournament-by-tournament breakdown lives on our highest goalscorers at World Cup finals page.

What makes the record unusual is that it may not settle for long. Messi will almost certainly retire from World Cup football after Sunday, but Mbappe will be 31 at the 2030 finals, and on his current rate a fourth tournament would put the mark somewhere no one else has been. Klose’s 16 lasted 12 years. This one has already changed hands once in a month.

Frequently asked questions

The most common questions about the new World Cup goalscoring record, answered.