Picture : Erling Haaland has become Norway’s all-time leading scorer at the World Cup (4), surpassing Kjetil Rekdal (2).
World Cup 2026 Statistics – Day 12 (June 22)
Argentina vs Austria 2-0 (Group J)
*Argentina have won all their last 9 matches in all competitions: their best winning streak since November 2015 – June 2016 (also 9).
*Argentina have won their first two matches of a World Cup tournament for the first time since 2014.
*Argentina started a World Cup edition with two wins without conceding a goal (also 3-0 vs Algeria) for the 2nd time.
The precedent: 1998 (1-0 vs Japan and 5-0 vs Jamaica).
*A penalty missed by Messi was the 7th at this World Cup; all six previous attempts were successful.
Last World Cup edition without missing a penalty was 1994 (15 scored out of 15)
*Argentina are now the team with the most missed penalties (excluding shootouts) in the history of the World Cup – 5.
The next are Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Ghana (3 each).
France vs Iraq 3-0 (Group I)
*France have mathematically qualified for the next round. They have now advanced from the group stage in four consecutive World Cups (2014, 2018, 2022, and 2026): their best streak ever.
*Kylian Mbappé, with his brace, reached 16 goals in World Cups – a figure that was the competition’s record until yesterday. Now, due to the Messi explosion, he is only joint-second with Miroslav Klose.
*Mbappe is the fourth player to score 2+ goals in at least three successive World Cup appearances, along with:
Guillermo Stabile (Argentina) in 1930,
Sándor Kocsis (Hungary) in 1954 (run of 4 such games),
and now also Lionel Messi in 2022 & 2026.
*Ousmane Dembélé has scored his first World Cup in his 13th match in the competition. Among all players who ever scored in the World Cup, he waited the joint-second most games for his first goal, along with Spain’s Carles Puyol (in 2010).
Only Karl-Heinz Schnellinger (Germany, 1970) took more games for this.
The next are Wolfgang Overath (Germany, 1970) and Manuel Amoros (France, 1986). They took 12 games each.
*With Dembélé finally scoring, Brazil’s Denilson became the striker with the most appearances (12, of which in 11 he was used as a substitute) in the history of the World Cup without scoring a single goal.
*Michael Olise became the third player to provide assists in each of his first two World Cup matches for France, after:
Alain Giresse in 1982,
Theo Hernandez in 2022.
*Olise reached 30 assists in the season 2025-26 in all competitions (26 with Bayern Munich, 4 with France).
*Didier Deschamps has now won 16 World Cups games as a coach. He equaled the record in the competition’s history, held by Helmut Schön (Germany).
*Deschamps is now the coach with the 2nd most World Cup matches managed by the same national team (21), ahead of Oscar Tabarez (Uruguay) and Mario Zagallo (Brazil) with 20 and behind only Helmut Schön (25).
*A France match was interrupted for weather reasons for the 2nd time in a major tournament after the one against Ukraine on15 June 2012 at the Euro.
*Weather conditions (threat of thunderstorms) caused a delay during a World Cup game for the first time since 1974 when the Poland vs Germany match in started several minutes late due to heavy rain in Frankfurt.
Norway vs Senegal 3-2 (Group I)
*Senegal has conceded at least three goals in each of their last three World Cup matches.
*A Norway’s substitution of Julian Ryerson to Marcus Pedersen in the 13th minute is the earliest by a starting player in the World Cup since 27 June 2018, when Marcelo (Brazil) left the field injured in the 10th minute of the game vs Serbia.
*Marcus Pedersen, with his goal in 43rd minute, became the 6th substitute in the history of the World Cup to score in the first half, after:
Christophe Dugarry (France, 35′ vs South Africa) in 1998
Esteban Cambiasso (Argentina, 31′ vs Serbia and Montenegro) in 2006
Marco Materazzi (Italy, 26′ vs Czechia) in 2006
Andreas Samaris (Greece, 42′ vs Ivory Coast) in 2014
Denis Cheryshev (Russia, 43′ vs Saudi Arabia) in 2018
*Erling Haaland has become Norway’s all-time leading scorer at the World Cup (4), surpassing Kjetil Rekdal (2).
*Haaland extended his world record run to 12 competitive matches for Norway with scoring goals.
*Another word record set by Haaland after this game: he became the first ever player in World Cup history to reach 20 goals in an edition counting qualification (16) and final (4) phases combined.
Gerd Müller (Germany) in the 1970 edition, Karim Bagheri (Iran) in the 1998, and Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) in the 2018 had 19 goals each.
*Haaland became the 6th player in the history of the World Cup to score 2+ goals in his first and second match in the competition, after:
Guillermo Stábile (Argentina, 3+2) in 1930
Sándor Kocsis (Hungary, 3+4) in 1954
Just Fontaine (France, 3+2) in 1958
Grzegorz Lato (Poland, 2+2) in 1974
Harry Kane (England, 2+3) in 2018
*The 2026 World Cup already has three players with 4+ goals in their first two matches: Messi (5), Mbappé (4), and Haaland (4).
This is the third edition in history in which this has happened. The precedents:
1954: Sándor Kocsis (Hungary, 7), Erich Probst (Austria), and Max Morlock (Germany).
2018: Harry Kane (England, 5), Romelu Lukaku (Belgium, 4), Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal, 4).
In the 1954 case, Morlock was rested in the Germany’s 2nd game (3-0 vs Hungary) and appeared then again in a group playoff vs Turkey (7-2) what was the 2nd game in the tournament for him personally.
Therefore, only 2018 and 2026 editions saw 3 players scoring 4+ goals after first 2 match-days.
*Ismaïla Sarr has become the first Senegalese player in history to score in two different World Cups (2022, 2026).
*Due to weather condition and long break in the preceding game France vs Iraq, this game partly coincided with it in time.
The last case of one World Cup match coincided with another (excluding the third match-day of the group stage, where it’s the norm) was on 25 June 1994, also in the United States: Belgium vs Netherlands and Saudi Arabia vs Morocco, both from the second match-day of Group F, were played at the same time.
Jordan vs Algeria 1-2 (Group J)
*Algeria won a match in which they were behind in the score at the World Cup for the first time in history.
*Algeria’s Riyad Mahrez became the oldest African player (35 years and 4 months) to provide an assist in the World Cup since Roger Milla for Cameroon against England on 1 July 1990 (38 years and 1 month).
*Mahrez became the oldest player to start for Algeria at the World Cup.
*Jamal Sellami (a Moroccan coach of Jordan) became the first African-born coach to face an African team (Algeria) in World Cup history.