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Roger Milla was 38 when he scored twice against Colombia at Italia '90 and turned himself into a folk hero on the spot, dancing at the corner flag in a way nobody at that World Cup had seen a 38-year-old move. Four years later he did it again, older, slower on paper, and somehow still standing over a chance no one expected him to get. That second goal, against Russia at USA '94, is why his name still tops this list more than three decades on.
The record
Milla scored for Cameroon against Russia on 28 June 1994, at 42 years and 39 days old. It remains the oldest a man has ever been to score at a men's World Cup, and it is a record built on a record: his brace against Colombia four years earlier had already made him the oldest scorer in the tournament's history at the time, at 38 years and 34 days. He simply went and beat himself.
Cameroon lost that 1994 match 6-1, with Russia's Oleg Salenko scoring all six of the other goals in what is still the only five-goal haul by one player in a single World Cup match. Milla's goal was a footnote to Salenko's afternoon, but it is the number next to Milla's name that has lasted.
Ronaldo closes the gap
At the 2026 World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo went further than any player has gone since. He had gone nine major-tournament games without a goal heading into the finals and looked short of his best in Portugal's opener against DR Congo. Then, against Uzbekistan on 23 June, he scored twice, becoming only the second man over 40 to score at a World Cup and, at 41 years and 138 days, the second-oldest scorer in the competition's history behind Milla. The brace also made him the oldest player to score twice in the same World Cup match, and the first man to score at six different World Cups.
Ronaldo was not finished. On 6 July, in Portugal's round of 16 defeat to Spain, he had already set a separate record eleven days earlier: his penalty against Croatia on 25 June made him, at 41 years and 147 days, the oldest player ever to score in a World Cup knockout match, taking the record from Portugal team-mate Pepe, who had held it since 2022.
The rest of the list
Pepe himself sits third. He was 39 years and 283 days old when he headed in against Switzerland at the 2022 World Cup, the last international goal of his career, and until Ronaldo's Croatia penalty he was the oldest man to score in a knockout game. Lionel Messi is fourth, at 38 years and 363 days after a second-game brace against Austria at the 2026 finals, part of a tournament in which he also became the oldest player to score a World Cup hat-trick, against Algeria, and finished as the competition's outright all-time top scorer.
Sweden's Gunnar Gren completes the historic top five. He was 37 years and 236 days old when he scored the only World Cup goal of his career, in the 1958 semi-final win over West Germany that sent Sweden into the final against a 17-year-old Pelé's Brazil. Mexico's Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Panama's Felipe Baloy, Austria's Marko Arnautovic, Uruguay's Obdulio Varela and Argentina's Martín Palermo make up the rest of the top ten, a spread that runs from 1954 to 2026.
The other end of the list
The record at the opposite extreme has stood since before most of the men above were born. Pelé was 17 years and 239 days old when he scored against Wales in the 1958 quarter-final, the first of three teenage records he set inside a few weeks: youngest World Cup goalscorer, youngest hat-trick scorer five days later against France, and youngest scorer in a final when he struck twice in the 5-2 win over the hosts, Sweden. He remains the only player to have scored in a World Cup before turning 18, and the gap between his record and Milla's, roughly a quarter of a century of playing career, says something about how differently a World Cup can be won.
Why the record keeps moving
Two things are pulling this list towards the present. Sports science and squad management now let elite players extend at the top level well past 35 in a way that was rare before the 1990s, and the international calendar keeps producing World Cups a great player's generation was not supposed to reach. Ronaldo, Messi and Pepe were all playing at a World Cup as veterans of a squad they might once have been expected to have retired from years earlier. Milla's record has survived one World Cup cycle after another since 1994, but for the first time in three decades, the players chasing it are getting genuinely close.
Written by The ARCHV. Ages and dates verified against FIFA.com and Opta Analyst, cross-checked with ESPN. Player illustrations across the site are original stylised artwork, not photographs.