WORLD CUP
2026

On the tenth of June 2002, during the third place play-off between South Korea and Turkey, Turkish striker Hakan Sukur did something that has never been matched at a World Cup before or since. From the very first kick-off of the match, the ball was worked forward through midfield, played wide, and crossed into the penalty area, where Sukur met it and smashed it into the net. The whole sequence took just eleven seconds from the referee's whistle to the ball crossing the line, the fastest goal in the entire history of the World Cup. Many fans in the stadium had not even settled into their seats before Turkey were already a goal ahead. The Turkish team went on to win the match three to two, securing third place at that tournament, but it is the astonishing speed of that single goal that football fans still talk about more than twenty years later. Football statisticians have pored over match footage for decades looking for anything close to that pace, and nothing has ever come within several seconds of it.