At the 2026 FIFA World Cup, no individual player has yet claimed dominance at the top of the scoring charts, because the most prolific scorer of all is no single striker, but rather a collective act of misfortune. Six own goals have been registered at this tournament in North America, a figure that outnumbers the tally of any single player in the entire competition.
Those six own goals place the 2026 edition joint-second in the all-time list for own goals at a single World Cup, level with 1998 in France and 2022 in Qatar. The only tournament to have seen more was the 2018 edition in Russia, where an extraordinary 12 own goals were recorded - double the previous record at the time, which had stood since 1998.
Accidental Scorers Across Continents
The accidental scorers of 2026 have spanned continents and come in all shapes of misfortune. The tournament's first own goal arrived as early as the seventh minute of the opening USA-Paraguay match, when Christian Pulisic's brilliant pass to Weston McKennie put Paraguay defender Damian Bobadilla under pressure, resulting in the ball rolling into his own net.
The second came in the 94th minute of Switzerland vs Qatar, as Swiss left-back Miro Muheim turned a Boualem Khoukhi header into his own net to hand Qatar a dramatic 1-1 draw. Own goal number three arrived on June 15, as Belgium's Romelu Lukaku, within a minute of coming on as a substitute, pressured Egypt's Mohamed Hany into deflecting the ball past his own goalkeeper.
Then came Iraq's Aymen Hussein, who had the extraordinary misfortune of first scoring a legitimate goal for Iraq against Norway and then, deep in stoppage time, putting the ball into his own net to complete a 4-1 defeat. In doing so, Hussein joined Netherlands' Ernie Brandts in 1974 and Croatia's Mario Mandzukic in 2018 as the only players ever to score a goal and an own goal in the same World Cup match.
Record Within Reach
The own goal tally has climbed to six and with the knockout rounds still to come, the record set in Russia is not entirely out of reach. At this World Cup, even the defenders are scoring.
