Monday, June 16

Following Bayern Munich's 10-0 win at the Club World Cup over Auckland City, Sports Mole looks back at the biggest winning margins across the rest of football's major competitions.

Whether it be at the World Cup, in the Champions League, or even in a domestic league, football is renowned for tense battles and close head-to-heads between two sides, often of a similar level.

However, every now and again at the elite level, there are gross mismatches, where one team puts in the best performance of their season, while the opponents suffer their worst.

Other occasions also see an unlikely underdog reach a big competition against all odds, but find it too difficult to compete, and are brought crashing back down to earth by much stronger opponents.

Auckland City are the most recent opponents to suffer such ignamany, as the amateurs lost 10-0 to Bayern Munich in their first meetings against European opposition at the inaugural 32-team Club World Cup over the weekend.

On the back of that extraordinary scoreline, Sports Mole looks back at the biggest margins of victory in football’s biggest and most reputable competitions.

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It is well documented that the largest ever scoreline in a competitive fixture came all the way back in 1885, when Arbroath beat Bon Accord 36-0 in a Scottish Cup match, but this article will look at different individual competitions and the respective record in each.

The Club World Cup has become the newest tournament on the football stage, being revamped into a new 32-team event, and on day two, a record winning margin has already been set, and may not be beaten for a very long time.

Bayern’s ruthless 10-0 win over Auckland City was expected, with the New Zealanders being entirely amateur and part-time footballers, facing some of the highest-paid players in world football like Harry Kane and Jamal Musiala.

Remarkably, Kane did not find the net, but Musiala did, netting a hat trick off the bench, while Thomas Muller, Michael Olise and Kingsley Coman all bagged braces.

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At the FIFA World Cup

While the Club World Cup was quick to see a huge scoreline, the men’s and women’s international versions have also seen nations net double figures before.

For the men, this came back in 1982, when, a number of years after their heyday in the 1950s, Hungary put in a performance Puskas and Kocsis et al would have been proud of, thrashing El Salvador 10-1 during the group stage.

Held in Elche, not only is the game the largest margin of victory in a World Cup match, it also saw the only occasion where a substitute has scored a hat trick, with Laszlo Kiss entering the fray and notching three within 20 minutes, just before Tibor Nyilasi rounded off the scoring with their 10th.

The Mighty Magyars from the 1950s are tied with the Hungary side from 1982 in terms of margin of victory, as they beat South Korea 9-0 at the 1954 World Cup, and Yugoslavia repeated that feat against the infamous Zaire side from 1974.

On the women’s side, the all-conquering USA team hold the record after they thrashed Thailand 13-0 in Reims in 2019, despite only leading 3-0 at the interval, overtaking Germany’s record, after they beat Argentina 11-0 at the 2007 finals.

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In other international competitions

Auckland’s defeat against Bayern will remind many people of Tahiti’s appearance at the 2013 Confederations Cup, when New Zealand remarkably did not win the OFC Cup, providing the opportunity to the island nation to take part alongside the world’s best.

The world was stunned when Tahiti scored a goal in their 6-1 defeat to Nigeria to begin their group stage campaign, but it was much uglier when reigning World Champions and back-to-back Euro winners Spain lined up.

David Villa netted a hat trick, while Fernando Torres found the net four times as Spain hammered the beleaguered Toa Aito 10-0 at the Maracana, but playing at such a venue, against players of that calibre, will have been a life-changing moment for every member of the Tahiti squad.

The international stage is where most thrashings frequently occur, with microstates and less-developed nations struggling to compete with the riches of more established countries, and that was evident in qualifying for Euro 2024, when France mercilessly put 14 goals past Gibraltar.

Kylian Mbappe got a hat trick, including one goal from the halfway line, on a night where nine French players found the net, including one unfortunate Gibraltarian defender, overtaking Germany for the biggest win in a European qualifier, after Die Mannschaft had beaten San Marino 13-0 away from home in Euro 2008 qualifying.

That is by no means the biggest win in a competitive international fixture though, as that honour goes to Australia, whose 31-0 win over American Samoa in a 2002 World Cup qualifier led both to the Aussies moving to the Asian confederation to play their competitive action, and OFC restructuring their qualifying format, introducing a preliminary round to avoid such scorelines from happening again.

Archie Thompson claimed, and still holds, the record for the most goals in a single international match from that 31-0 win (13), while the fixture was the inspiration behind the documentary ‘Next Goal Wins’ and the sports comedy film of the same name which was released in 2023, which chronicles the journey of the American Samoa team.

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In Europe’s top-five leagues

Club football also sees its fair share of huge scorelines though, and while the Scottish Cup may hold the record for the biggest margin of victory, the FA Cup is not far behind, given that Preston North End beat Hyde 26-0 during their glory era in the 1880s.

In the 21st century, Manchester City’s 8-0 win over Salford City remains the joint-highest winning margin in the FA Cup, which is quite surprising, considering the Premier League has witnessed bigger mismatches on four separate occasions.

Southampton (twice), Bournemouth and Ipswich Town have all suffered the ignamany of losing 9-0 in a Premier League fixture, and while the Saints were not helped by red cards in both defeats, Bournemouth’s 9-0 loss at Anfield against Liverpool will go down as possibly the worst of the lot.

The Premier League is the only top-five league not to witness a double-figure margin of victory though, but that is due to its relative infancy compared to other leagues, because in La Liga, Barcelona are the club who were on the receiving end of the worst defeat.

Athletic Bilbao thumped Barca 12-1 back in 1931 and that remains a record almost 100 years on, but in more recent times, Real Madrid enjoyed eight-goal winning margins over both Rayo Vallecano (10-2), and Granada (9-1) in the same year (2015).

It is the same story in Ligue 1, where their record winning margin came during the interwar period, as Sochaux beat Valenciennes 12-1, and shortly after World War Two, Torino recorded the biggest in Serie A history, as the famous Grande Torino side thrashed Alessandria 10-0 on the way to the title.

In the Bundesliga though, many will still remember the day Borussia Dortmund were beaten 12-0 by Borussia Monchengladbach on the final day of the 1977-78 season, in what was a sobering day for both teams.

Dortmund, already assured to finish mid-table, gave up, as Gladbach continued to press on to score more goals, knowing they needed a 10-goal swing on Koln to win the title, but they beat St Pauli 5-0, meaning Udo Lattek’s side came up three goals short, and future Euro 2004-winning manager Otto Rehhagel was sacked as BVB manager the next day, with accusation of match-fixing floating around.

The most remarkable scoreline seen in a big European league in the recent past was in the Eredivisie though, when Ajax won 13-0 away to VVV-Venlo behind closed doors during the 2020-21 season, beating their own record set back in 1971-72, when their famous side beat Vitesse 12-1.

Erik ten Hag was the manager for Ajax on this day, and two of his future Manchester United signings Antony and Lisandro Martinez got on the scoresheet, while Bertrand Traore was the standout player, scoring five times.

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In European competition

Even though there has been a rush to deny many of the more minor leagues in Europe any entry into the Champions League, hefty scorelines are still seen in the competition, as Bayern beat Dinamo Zagreb 9-2 during the league phase in 2024-25.

That is not the biggest win in Champions League history though, because that honour is shared by Liverpool and Real Madrid, who have both won 8-0 in the competition, against Besiktas and Malmo, respectively.

Harking back to the days of the European Cup though, and there were plenty of big winning margins, but none bigger than Dinamo Bucharest’s 11-0 thumping of Northern Irish outfit Crusaders in 1973, a feat that will probably never be beaten in the Champions League’s current format.

The Europa League is also a competition that has become much more competitive in the 21st century in particular, and since rebranding in 2009, 11 teams hold the record for the biggest winning margin (six goals), with Arsenal being one of them thanks to their 6-0 win over BATE Borisov in 2017, but the most impressive was Lyon’s 7-1 win over AZ, which completed an 11-2 win on aggregate in the Round of 32.

In its old moniker as the UEFA Cup though, Ajax crop up again in this rundown, because their 14-0 thrashing of Luxembourg outfit RB Differdange remains the competition record, in a match where the Dutch giants were at full strength, and saw Marco van Basten score five, while defender Ronald Koeman added a hat trick.

The UEFA Conference League is only half-a-decade old, but already that has seen bigger victories than its older brother, as 2024-25’s dominant club Chelsea flexed their muscles throughout the competition, beating Armenian champions Noah 8-0, while just a few weeks later, Fiorentina battered Austrian side LASK Linz 7-0 at the Artemio Franchi.

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