Not once, not twice, but thrice.
France winger Ousmane Dembélé scored three goals in the first half of its World Cup match against Norway on Friday, putting the Paris Saint-Germain star firmly in the mix for the Golden Boot race for the tournament’s top-goal scorer.
All of Dembélé’s goals came in the first 32 minutes of the match at Boston Stadium. He became the first player to score a first-half hat trick at a men’s FIFA World Cup since Russia’s Oleg Selenko in 1994, who finished with five goals in one match.
Dembélé completed the feat with three completely different goals. The third goal was a combination of his first two — a curler with his left foot from the same spot he powered his first goal in with his right foot.
Dembélé entered Friday’s match with one goal. With four goals, he sits behind Lionel Messi (five goals) in the Golden Boot race. He joins Messi and Canada’s Jonathan David as the third player with a hat trick at this tournament.
Dembélé By The Numbers
1: Ballon’Or award, which he won in 2025 as the world’s best player.
3: Dembélé is the third player to score a hat-trick for France at a men’s World Cup, after Just Fontaine (two in 1958) and Kylian Mbappé (one in 2022).
11: Number of international goals he now has, with his first coming back in 2017 in a friendly match vs. England.
19: The number of previous major international tournament games without scoring a goal before France’s last game; Dembélé now has four in the last two.
20: By assisting Dembélé on one of his goals, Mbappé has tied Germany’s Miroslav Klose for the second-most most goal contributions (goals + assists) at the World Cup since 1966 (20: 16 goals, 4 assists). Only Lionel Messi has more than Mbappé (26).
32: The number of minutes for Dembélé to achieve his hat trick. It’s the second earliest ever in World Cup history (Austria’s Erich Probst did in 24 minutes in 1954 vs. Czechia).
