Cypriot Striker Scores 16 goals in a Single Game

By: Bob | May 7th, 2007

Leave it to the third division in Cyprus to produce the most startling scoreline of the weekend. Personally I prefer the second division in Cyprus much more, but I digress. The final tally of the match between Olympos Xylofagou and Ayios Athanasios shows Olympos winning 24-3. Nice to see that they played by the internationally established 21-goal mercy rule too.

The story of the match, and really it is more of an urban legend since all we have is a small wire report and not a YouTube video to be found, was the effort of Olympos striker Panagiotis Pontikos. He finished with 16 goals in the game, more than enough to assure that every Cypriot has lamb this year.

“I cannot remember a result like that in all the years I have been involved with football,” said a Cyprus Football Association official. “The same goes for the amount of goals scored by the player.”

Is this a world record? I can’t say either way. After much poking around I have yet to come across a definitive answer to the question of which player has scored the most goals in a FIFA sanctioned football game. I do know that Archie Thompson scored 13 goals in the most lopsided game in history and that the most goals scored in a game in England was done by Luton Town’s Joe Payne against Bristol Rovers in 1936 when he scored 10 goals.

My favorite goal scoring record belongs to Denis Law when he scored a then record six goals for Manchester City against Luton Town in the FA Cup only to have the game called off with his team leading 6-2 because of poor weather. In the replay, Manchester City lost 3-1. Ouch.

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Category: World Football

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Lester P

Crap I predicted they would win 27-4
Ian

This is one of the (many) joys of lower-division football. I love watching the evenly matched Prem teams play each other to 1-1 draws - those are beautiful games - but every once in a while, its satisfying to see a bunch of guys that probably have other jobs beat the living snot out of a bunch of other guys that probably have other jobs.
Chris

When I was living in Spain, I went to every game that the Fourth Division team in my town played at home.

The last game I saw ended up being 16-0. It was fun being at the game and watching it, but I couldn't bear to watch it the next day when they showed the replay on local TV. Nobody scored more than 3 goals for the team, but it was so lopsided that the other team never sniffed the goal. And yes, it was an official league game.