About

Editorial policy and corrections

How World Cup 2030 Guide stays independent, how advertising will be labeled, where its images come from, and how errors are corrected, with a dated log of the factual errors fixed so far.

Independence

World Cup 2030 Guide is an independent editorial archive, not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by FIFA. Nobody pays to appear or to be ranked in an article, and we publish no sponsored content or paid links.

If the site carries advertising or affiliate links, they will be labeled as such and kept separate from editorial content. No figure, ranking or article will be changed to suit an advertiser or partner.

Images

Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons, under a free license or in the public domain, and each is credited, with its license, on Sources and image credits.

The preview image shown when a page is shared is a card generated by the site’s own code, with no photograph; any figure on it is checked against the published page before the card is made. We do not publish AI-generated faces.

How corrections are made

When something we published proves wrong, we correct the article and log it below: the date, the page, what was wrong and what is right. We log errors of fact, such as a wrong number, name, date or rank, or a claim its source does not support; changes of wording are not logged, and logged corrections stay.

Each article shows when its figures were last checked, and where sources disagree on a detail, such as the minute of a goal, it says so; the method is in How we verify.

Corrections log

  • 23 Sep 2026, World Cup records. Said the career, single-tournament and single-match scoring records had never had the same holder; Just Fontaine, among others, held the first two at once, from 1958 until Gerd Müller passed him in the 1974 final.
  • 23 Sep 2026, World Cup top scorers of all time. Repeated that claim. Said sixteen of the seventeen totals were final; three could still change, Kylian Mbappé’s, Harry Kane’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s. Said Lionel Messi held the record for about three weeks; he held it alone from 22 June to 18 July 2026. Called Oleg Salenko’s three matches in 1994 the fewest of any tournament top scorer; Flórián Albert, joint top scorer in 1962, also played three.
  • 23 Sep 2026, Ronaldo Nazário. Said only one man had ever bettered Fontaine’s 2.17 goals per match; that holds only among players with ten or more goals (Sándor Kocsis, 2.20), since Ernst Wilimowski scored four in his only World Cup match, in 1938. Said the enlarged 1998 tournament raised the matches needed to reach the final from six to seven; finalists already played seven, as Brazil did in 1994. Said his 0.79 goals per match beat both men who had passed him; three had, and Mbappé’s 1.00 was higher. Put his first goal against Japan in 2006 in the 45th minute; it came in first-half stoppage time.
  • 23 Sep 2026, Paolo Rossi. Said he played five matches at the 1982 tournament without scoring. He played four, against Poland, Peru, Cameroon and Argentina, before his hat-trick against Brazil.
  • 23 Sep 2026, Michel Platini. Listed a 1982 “Team of the Tournament” as an individual award; FIFA’s official all-star teams began in 1994, and the 1982 teams that include him were media selections. Said the 1978 defeat by Argentina “all but ended” France’s tournament; it eliminated France with a match to play.
  • 23 Sep 2026, Roberto Baggio. Spelled Italy’s third penalty taker in the 1994 final “Alberigo Evani”; he is Alberico Evani.
  • 23 Sep 2026, Eusébio. Said Portugal’s 3-1 win over Brazil in 1966 sent Brazil out. Brazil could still qualify, and went out the next day, when Hungary beat Bulgaria 3-1.
  • 23 Sep 2026, Just Fontaine. Dated the 1958 match for third place 26 June, as RSSSF does. FIFA and Wikipedia give 28 June.
  • 19 Sep 2026, Ronaldo Nazário. Said Fontaine’s 2.17 goals per match in 1958 was a rate “no one has approached in nearly seventy years”; Kocsis had scored 11 in five matches in 1954, a rate of 2.20. The ranking table also ignored ties: Kane and Gerd Müller, level on 14, shared fifth; Cristiano Ronaldo shared ninth with Kocsis and Jürgen Klinsmann.
  • 19 Sep 2026, World Cup top scorers of all time. Counts corrected after publication: Messi’s 34 matches were seven more than anyone else on the list, not eight; five players, not four, averaged a goal a match or better; ten goals was the third-highest total at one tournament, not joint second; two more goals would have put Kane level third with Miroslav Klose, not alone fourth.
  • 19 Sep 2026, World Cup players. The index gave Eusébio and Just Fontaine “One squad, one played”, though only their matches, not their squad lists, had been checked; it was changed to “One tournament played”.