15 Most Unbelievable Records in Football History

Professional football has seen some incredible records set throughout its many years of history. One entrant on this list is the only player to have played professional football in five different decades. Another entrant, known as "The Beast," accrued a total of 46 red cards in his career, the most ever accumulated by a player.

Given football’s long and storied history as a professional sport, it is of no surprise that there are countless records that have been set over the years. Many of these records, especially related to goal scoring, have been broken in the game’s modern era, mainly by the duo of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi , such was their quality at the peak of their powers. Some records, such as appearances or goals within a league, could feasibly be broken in the coming years.



They are something to strive for, after all, and players are playing for longer and developing further. But that is not true of every record in the sport. What about the records that would take a miracle, or something very close to such an event, to be broken? The records that, as it appears currently, may well stand the test of time? Here are some of football’s most unbelievable records.

The two will go down as the greatest footballers of all time, but how do their statistics compare on the international scene? 15 Most Unbelievable Records in Football History Record Record Setter Record Figure Team Played For (if applicable) Date (if applicable) Most League Appearances for One Club Said Altinordu 847 Altinordu S.K. 1929-1956 Most Goals in a Single World Cup Just Fontaine 13 goals France 1957 Most Hat-Tricks Ever Erwin Helmchen 141 hat-tricks FV Brandenburg Cottbus, PSV Chemnitz, SG Chemnitz Nord, VfB Lubeck 1923-1951 Longest Distance Goal Scored Tom King 96.

01 metres Newport County 19th January 2021 Most Goals in a Calendar Year Lionel Messi 91 goals Barcelona 2012 Most Goals in a Game AS Adema and SO I'Emrye AS Adema 149-0 SOE N/A 31st October 2002 Most Red Cards in a Game Claypole and Victoriano Arenas 36 N/A 27th February 2011 Most Clean Sheets Ever Ray Clemence 537 Scunthorpe United, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur 1965-1988 Oldest Professional Footballer Ever Kazuyoshi Miura 57 years old+ Yokohama FC 5th March 2017 Most Red Cards Ever Gerardo Bedoya 46 red cards Deportivo Pereira, Deportivo Cali, Racing Club, Colon, Atletico National, Millonarios, Envigado, Santa Fe, Cucuta Deportivo, Colombia 1995-2015 Smallest League in the World Isles of Scilly League Two Teams N/A N/A Most Goals Scored by One Player in an International Game Archie Thompson 13 goals Australia 11th April 2001 Most Goals Scored by a Goalkeeper Rogerio Ceni 131 goals Sao Paulo 1993-2015 Most Official Matches Played In Peter Shilton 1,396 Leicester City, Stoke City, Nottingham Forest, Southampton, Derby County, Plymouth Argyle, Wimbledon, Bolton, Coventry, West Ham, Leyton Orient, England 1966-1997 Biggest Gap Between Spells at the Same Club Paulo da Silva 29 years Atlantida 1995 and 2024 Most League Appearances for One Club When you have the opportunity to name a football club after yourself, it's no surprise if you decide that you will never be leaving. That was the case with Turkish legend Said Altinordu, who following the enactment of the Suriname Law in Turkey in 1934, led him to choose the official name of Altinordu S.K.

The defender would make a remarkable 847 appearances for the club in the league, scoring 29 times. He would win six regional titles with Altinordu S.K over the course of his career, while he would also be recognised for his ability by being called up to the Turkish national team on four occasions.

Indeed, following Altinordu's own spell with Turkey, no other player who had played at the club ever turned out for the international side ever again until former Leicester City defender Caglar Soyuncu did so back in 2016. Most Goals Scored in a Single World Cup While Just Fontaine may no longer hold the record of scoring the most goals in World Cup history, he is still the man with the most goals in just one World Cup. The Frenchman's incredible feat of netting 13 times at the 1958 World Cup beggars belief, and it was no surprise when Pele named him as one of the 125 greatest players ever back in 2004.

Fontaine bagged 13 goals in just the six games at that 1958 World Cup, including scoring four times against then defending champions West Germany. Unsurprisingly, it won him the Golden Boot, while Fontaine also netted a hat-trick in the group stages of the competition against Paraguay. Most Hat-Tricks Ever A record that is not too far away from reaching its 100th anniversary, Erwin Helmchen's exploits in German football during the 20th century is something to behold.

According to RSSSF, the striker holds the official record for the most hat-tricks scored in football history, netting 141 of them over his astonishing 28-year career. Unsurprising given his knack of embarrassing opponents with his hat-tricks, but Helmchen is also recognised as being the most prolific goal-scorer in football history having bagged 989 goals in 582 official matches. This latter record though does feature goals counted as part of his playing at regional, league and city teams.

Longest Distance Goal Scored In January 2021, about halfway through the domestic campaign in England, Newport County travelled to Cheltenham Town for a League Two clash between the two teams. Starting in goal for Newport was Tom King, who is now the third-choice goalkeeper for Premier League side Wolverhampton Wanderers . Just over 10 minutes had passed when the ball went out for a goal kick.

King’s clearance flew forward, powered by the strong wind on the night and catching out opposing shot-stopper Josh Griffiths, sailing over him and into the net. Newport were unable to win the game, however. Matty Blair scored an equalising goal just before the half-time whistle and despite efforts from both sides after the break, they were forced to settle for a point each by the end of the game.

Two days after the match, Guinness World Records confirmed that King’s goal had set a record for the longest goal scored in competitive football at just over 96 metres, beating the previous record set in 2013 by then- Stoke City goalkeeper Asmir Begovic . Most Goals in a Calendar Year One of, if not the best, to ever play the game, Lionel Messi is still one of the world’s sharpest players despite being in his mid-thirties. Understandably, his game has changed and evolved as he has grown older, with countless accolades to his name across the last decade to add to what he had already accomplished.

Individually, however, 2012 as a calendar year was undoubtedly Messi’s best. For club and country, the Argentinian made 69 appearances, notching 22 assists and scoring a staggering 91 goals. Amazingly, Barcelona that year only won the 2011/12 Copa del Rey despite Messi’s efforts, but that takes nothing away from a record that will take some beating if ever it is topped.

Most Goals in a Game In the 2002 four-team play-off tournament to decide the national champions of Madagascar, AS Adema were due to face SO I’Emyrne, their arch rivals, in the final match of the tournament. SOE had been held to a draw in their previous game which meant that the title went to Adema, in a match that left them incensed at some refereeing decisions that had gone against them. As such, when the two sides met, SOE’s form of defiance was to deliberately concede 149 goals, handing Adema not only a win, but the biggest victory of any football match in history, obliterating the previous record of 36-0 from a game between Arbroath and Bon Accord in the 1885 Scottish Cup.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Malagasy Football Federation was dissolved and reconstituted soon after this debacle, but the game’s referee went unpunished, as the situation was deemed to be out of his control. Most Red Cards in a Game In 2011, Claypole hosted their rivals Victoriano Arenas in a standard league clash within the fifth tier of Argentinian league football. Well, the game at least started as a standard clash, but such is the way of rivalries, tempers had been flared.

By the half-time whistle, two players had been dismissed in the first half. Chaos ensued after the game resumed, as players started consistently lunging into tackles which, to no surprise, resulted in more sending offs. Red cards piled up until a mass brawl eventually broke out, incorporating not only the players, but managers, coaches and even some fans from the stands.

Referee Damian Rubino’s eventual match report noted that he sought fit to serve every remaining player with a red card, including the staff that had been involved. As such, by the end of the match, there had been a staggering 36 red cards issued. Most Clean Sheets Ever Signed in 1967 to soon replace Tommy Lawrence, Ray Clemence would ultimately have to wait around four years before breaking into the Liverpool side as a first-team regular.

From then until his departure, however, Clemence was simply undroppable. It was at Anfield that he established himself as one of the best goalkeepers to ever grace the game. Clemence won five Football League First Division Titles, three European Cup’s and two UEFA Cup’s across his 13 years on Merseyside until departing for Tottenham Hotspur in 1981, with whom he would win another UEFA Cup and FA Cup .

He too was a regular for England until his international retirement in 1983. In a career spanning 23 years, Clemence made over 1,000 professional appearances. Within that immense number, the shot-stopper kept 537 clean sheets, setting a record figure that would take a player of immense quality to level, let alone beat.

It is safe to say that Liverpool have had their fair share of elite goalkeepers in their time. Oldest Professional Footballer Ever Fondly known as “King Kazu,” Kazuyoshi Miura made his professional debut in 1986 with Santos in Brazil. The Japanese attacker, who went on to play for his national team between 1990 and 2000 , has gone on to represent 16 different clubs over the course of his career which, extraordinarily, is still going on.

The only professional footballer in history to have played in five different decades, Miura is on loan at Atletico Suzuka at the time of writing, in the fourth tier of Japanese football, having had experience in South America and even Europe, with Genoa and Dinamo Zagreb, but spending the bulk of his career in his native Japan. In March 2017, Miura played for Yokohama FC and at 50 years and seven days old, became the oldest-ever professional football player, beating the record set by Sir Stanley Matthews in 1965. It is genuinely impossible to hazard even a guess at when Miura will retire and call an end to a 38-year career that is still growing in length.

What an absolute legend of the game Miura is Most Red Cards Ever Received Gerardo Bedoya enjoyed a 20-year career as a professional footballer, playing as a defensive midfielder for a variety of clubs in not only his native Columbia, but in Argentina and Mexico also. Bedoya represented his country internationally for much of the 2000s, making 49 appearances and notching four goals between 2000 and 2009. Bedoya was known as “The Beast,” a fitting nickname for the man who has accumulated the most red cards in football history.

He was sent off 46 times across his club career, with 14 of those dismissals coming as a Deportivo Cali player, despite only spending four years with the club. 10 red cards were shown to Bedoya across two years with Santa Fe in the early 2010s also, though rather remarkably, he was only given his marching orders once when playing for his national side . Smallest League in the World The Isles of Scilly are a small archipelago to the southwest of England, part of the Cornish peninsula and also home to what is the smallest football league in the world.

Only two teams populate the division, the Woolpack Wanderers and the Garrison Gunners, who play each other between 14 and 20 times per season. Though the Gunners have won more league titles, with 20, the Wanderers have won four-straight titles since the 2020/21 campaign. With all matches played on the island of St.

Mary’s, the teams also compete in the Wholesalers Cup and the Foredeck Cup, despite there being no other sides to enter. Although the league is affiliated with the Football Association of England, as they are not part of the English footballing pyramid, that makes them ineligible to play in competitions such as the FA Cup. Most Goals Scored by One Player in an International Game Two of the largest victories the sport has ever seen came on the same day.

The match between Australia and American Samoa in 2001 has become infamous within the game’s history. A World Cup qualifier, the match set a record for the highest scoreline ever seen in an international game, with Australia mauling their opponents by a 31-0 margin. Archie Thompson, a striker who spent the bulk of his career in Australia excluding a four-year stint in Belgium and one game in Spain 14 years later, also captured headlines against American Samoa.

His 13 goals is the most ever scored by any player in one game. David Zdrillic was the second-highest scorer with eight in that match, the highest number of a second-placed scorer in an international game since the First World War. Most Goals Scored by a Goalkeeper After playing 12 matches with Sinop as a teenager, Rogerio Ceni spent three years with the Sao Paulo youth team, making his debut for the club in 1993 and spending the remainder of his 22-year professional career there.

He made well over 1,000 appearances for the club and earned 16 caps for Brazil , but that is not at all what he is remembered for. Ceni was a dead-ball specialist and from 1997 until he retired, was the designated free-kick and penalty taker for his club. As well as being a genuinely great goalkeeper, his ability from a dead ball situation added another level to his game, a unique talent for a goalkeeper of all positions.

Ceni scored 131 goals in his career, though only 129 of them have been recognised according to the International Federation of History and Statistics. Regardless of which number is taken to be official, it is an incredible record to hold and one that, presumably, will never be beaten. Most Official Matches Played In Peter Shilton, remarkably, spent over three decades playing professional football, making over 100 appearances for five separate clubs: Leicester City , Stoke City, Nottingham Forest , Southampton and Derby County .

He made his England debut in 1970, spending 20 years with the national side. Despite only appearing in his first World Cup finals at the age of 32, he played 17 World Cup matches for the Three Lions on his way to 125 caps for his country, which makes him the most-capped player in England’s history. When Shilton called time on his career in 1997 in his late-40s, he did so having appeared in almost 1,400 professional football matches, an incredible number that is yet to be overtaken by another player.

Biggest Gap Between Spells at the Same Club Paulo da Silva began his career as a teenager in his native Paraguay, coming through the ranks at Atlantida. In a career spanning almost three decades, da Silva went on to spend time in Columbia, Italy, Mexico, Spain and England, spending two years with Sunderland when they were a Premier League side. In 2024, before he retired from professional football, da Silva returned to Atlantida, the club at which he started his career.

There was a 29-year gap between his two spells with the team, the longest period of time between two separate stints at the same club, a record that da Silva will most likely hold for some time..