Wearing your country’s colors at any event is something that fills players with immense pride, but doing so at a World Cup is a feeling that all soccer players dream of, even as a young child. All of that training and playing soccer every waking minute has paid off and they are finally on the biggest stage soccer can offer. What is even better than simply representing your country is scoring a goal for them at the famous international tournament. Over 3 billion people tuned in to watch the World Cup in 2014, so being a World Cup goal scorer is a pretty big deal.
While many players will be happy just to get one, other players are focused solely on scoring goals. They are the players who have made names for themselves as some of the best goal scorers in international soccer. They have helped their teams get to the closing stages of the World Cup, even going on to win it occasionally.
The World Cup has been played since 1930, and there have been thousands of players competing at the tournament throughout the years. While there have been many great players, there are only a handful of players to have scored as many goals as the players on this list. Do you know them all? These are the 20 top goals scorers in World Cup history.
[post_page_title]David Villa, Spain – 9[/post_page_title]
David Villa was a part of the Spain team that won the World Cup in 2010. Villa helped his country lift the trophy in 2010 with the five goals he scored on the way to the final. This legendary Spanish striker played in three World Cup tournaments during his career, starting in 2006 and ending in 2014. Villa repaid the faith his coaches showed in him by becoming Spain’s all-time top scorer at the World Cup. Although still playing professionally, Villa will not have the chance to score more for Spain as he wasn’t selected to play in this year’s World Cup and is expected to retire from playing before the next tournament in 2022.
