Not once, not twice, but thrice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
France winger Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 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.<\/p>\n
All of Demb\u00e9l\u00e9’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.<\/p>\n
Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 completed the feat with three completely different goals. The third goal was a combination of his first two \u2014 a curler with his left foot from the same spot he powered his first goal in with his right foot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 By The Numbers<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n 1:<\/strong> Ballon’Or award, which he won in 2025 as the world’s best player.<\/p>\n 3:<\/strong> Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 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 Mbapp\u00e9 (one in 2022).<\/p>\n 11:<\/strong> Number of international goals he now has, with his first coming back in 2017 in a friendly match vs. England.<\/p>\n 19: <\/strong>The number of previous major international tournament games without scoring a goal before France’s last game; Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 now has four in the last two.<\/p>\n 20<\/strong>: By assisting Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 on one of his goals, Mbapp\u00e9 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 Mbapp\u00e9 (26).<\/p>\n 32:<\/strong> The number of minutes for Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 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). POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Not once, not twice, but thrice.\u00a0 France winger Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 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 Demb\u00e9l\u00e9’s goals came in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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