The Highest-Scoring Soccer Game Ever

The highest-scoring soccer game ever recorded was AS Adema’s 149-0 win over SO l’Emyrne in Madagascar on October 31, 2002, a Guinness World Record. It comes with a huge asterisk: every one of the 149 goals was a deliberate own goal, scored by l’Emyrne’s own players in protest.

The scoreline is football’s most extreme, but it is an anomaly, not a scoring achievement. Understanding it requires separating a protest gone to a bizarre extreme from the sport’s genuine high-scoring records. Here is the full leaderboard of the highest-scoring soccer games on record, the story behind the 149-0, and the legitimate marks that sit beneath it. All figures are through 2025.

The record holder: AS Adema 149, SO l’Emyrne 0

SO l’Emyrne were furious. A refereeing decision in an earlier match had, in their view, cost them the Madagascan league title. So when they took the field against AS Adema, their players staged a protest unlike any in football history: they repeatedly kicked the ball into their own net, over and over, for a final score of 149-0. AS Adema barely touched the ball.

The result set a Guinness World Record for the most one-sided scoreline, and l’Emyrne’s coach was later banned. But because not a single goal was scored in normal play, the 149-0 is treated as a curiosity rather than a true scoring record. It tells you about a protest, not about football.

The full leaderboard of the highest-scoring games

The table below ranks the highest-scoring soccer games on record by total goals, separating the protest anomaly from legitimate competitive results.

Rank	Goals	Result	Competition	Date
1	149	AS Adema 149-0 SO l’Emyrne	Madagascar league (own-goal protest)	Oct 31, 2002
2	36	Arbroath 36-0 Bon Accord	Scottish Cup	Sep 12, 1885
3	35	Dundee Harp 35-0 Aberdeen Rovers	Scottish Cup	Sep 12, 1885
4	31	Australia 31-0 American Samoa	World Cup qualifier	Apr 11, 2001
5	26	Preston North End 26-0 Hyde	FA Cup	Oct 15, 1887
6	22	Australia 22-0 Tonga	World Cup qualifier	Apr 9, 2001

Below the Madagascar anomaly, the list is dominated by 19th-century British cup ties and Australia’s demolition of tiny Pacific nations in 2001, all cases where a strong side met a vastly weaker opponent.

The real record: Arbroath 36-0 Bon Accord

In a genuinely competitive match, the record belongs to Arbroath, who beat Bon Accord 36-0 in the Scottish Cup on September 12, 1885. On the same afternoon, Dundee Harp won 35-0. Early cup competitions had no seeding, so elite clubs were sometimes drawn against inexperienced local sides, producing scorelines that would be impossible in the modern game.

These results are legitimate in a way the 149-0 is not: the goals were actually scored, even if the mismatch was enormous.

The international record: Australia 31-0 American Samoa

The highest score in an international came in April 2001, when Australia beat American Samoa 31-0 in a World Cup qualifier. Striker Archie Thompson scored 13 goals, an individual world record for a single international match. Two days earlier, Australia had beaten Tonga 22-0. The results were so lopsided that they helped push FIFA and Oceania toward a preliminary qualifying round to protect the smallest nations, whose players were sometimes amateurs facing full internationals.

Why these games are so rare

Enormous scorelines require a total mismatch, an unseeded knockout draw, a qualifier between a football power and a minnow, or, in the Madagascar case, a deliberate protest. In modern top-flight leagues, where standards are more even and qualifying is structured, such games essentially cannot happen. That is why the leaderboard is frozen in the 19th century and a handful of unusual modern fixtures.

For scoring records that come from genuine competition at the highest level, our leaderboards of the most World Cup goals and the most goals in a Premier League season tell a different, more conventional story. Extreme moments at the World Cup itself, meanwhile, include the fastest goal in World Cup history.

Why the record matters

The highest-scoring soccer game is a reminder that records sometimes capture the strange rather than the great. AS Adema’s 149-0 will likely stand forever, precisely because it was never really a football match. The truer benchmarks, Arbroath’s 36-0 and Australia’s 31-0, show how lopsided the sport could be when the gap in quality was at its widest.

The short version: AS Adema beat SO l’Emyrne 149-0 in Madagascar on October 31, 2002 for the highest-scoring soccer game ever, though every goal was a deliberate own goal in protest. The highest genuine scores are Arbroath’s 36-0 in 1885 and Australia’s 31-0 over American Samoa in 2001, through 2025.