Paolo Rossi scored 9 World Cup goals in 14 matches for Italy, playing at the 1978 and 1982 tournaments. In 1982 he won the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball as Italy took the title, and his total is the Italian record: nine goals, shared by Roberto Baggio, Paolo Rossi and Christian Vieri.
World Cup record by tournament
| Tournament | Matches played | Goals | Italy’s finish | Individual award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978, Argentina | 7 | 3 | Fourth place | Second-best player (journalists’ vote) |
| 1982, Spain | 7 | 6 | Winners | Golden Ball and Golden Boot |
| 1986, Mexico | 0 | 0 | Round of 16 | — |
| Total | 14 | 9 | One title |
Read the 1986 row twice. Rossi was in Italy’s squad for Mexico 1986 and did not play a minute of it: he went to three World Cups and played in two. Ronaldo Nazário in 1994 is the same case. The 1978 award was a ranking by a panel of journalists; sources differ on whether it counts as the first Golden Ball.
Every World Cup match
Argentina 1978
| Date | Stage | Opponent | Italy’s result | Rossi’s goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 June | First round | France | 2-1 | 1 |
| 6 June | First round | Hungary | 3-1 | 1 |
| 10 June | First round | Argentina | 1-0 | 0 |
| 14 June | Second round | West Germany | 0-0 | 0 |
| 18 June | Second round | Austria | 1-0 | 1 |
| 21 June | Second round | Netherlands | 1-2 | 0 |
| 24 June | Third-place match | Brazil | 1-2 | 0 |
| Total | 3 |
Spain 1982
| Date | Stage | Opponent | Italy’s result | Rossi’s goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 June | First round | Poland | 0-0 | 0 |
| 18 June | First round | Peru | 1-1 | 0 |
| 23 June | First round | Cameroon | 1-1 | 0 |
| 29 June | Second round | Argentina | 2-1 | 0 |
| 5 July | Second round | Brazil | 3-2 | 3 |
| 8 July | Semi-final | Poland | 2-0 | 2 |
| 11 July | Final | West Germany | 3-1 | 1 |
| Total | 6 |
1978: a first international goal, then three in all
Rossi was twenty-one and had just finished a season as Serie A’s top scorer, but he had never scored for Italy. His first international goal came in the opening match, against France on 2 June 1978, and it was an equalizer: France, whose side included a twenty-two-year-old Michel Platini, had scored in the first minute.
He added the opening goal of the 3-1 win over Hungary four days later and the only goal of the match against Austria in the second round: three goals in seven matches. He did not score in the match that decided who reached the final, a 2-1 defeat by the Netherlands.
There were no semi-finals in 1978. After the first round the eight survivors were split into two groups of four, and the winner of each went straight to the final. Italy topped their first-round group, beating the hosts, Argentina, 1-0 in the last game; after the Netherlands defeat, a 2-1 loss to Brazil in the third-place match left them fourth. A panel of journalists ranked Rossi the second-best player of the tournament, behind Argentina’s Mario Kempes.
1982: from suspension to the Golden Boot
Rossi scored 6 goals in Spain, all of them in Italy’s last three matches, after four matches without one. Before the first of them he had not scored for Italy in more than three years.
The two years in between
In 1980, playing for Perugia, Rossi was implicated in Totonero, the Italian betting scandal, and was suspended for three years. The ban was cut to two on appeal. He always said he was innocent. He missed the 1980 European Championship, which Italy hosted.
He came back only at the very end of the 1981-82 season. By the time Italy named its squad for Spain he had played three matches in two seasons, by FIFA’s count. Coach Enzo Bearzot took him anyway, in place of Roberto Pruzzo, who had just won consecutive Serie A scoring titles.
Four matches without a goal
Spain 1982 was the first World Cup with 24 teams. Italy’s route ran through two group stages: a first round, then a second-round group of three teams whose winner went straight to the semi-final.
Rossi started the first three matches, and Italy drew all of them: 0-0 with Poland, 1-1 with Peru, 1-1 with Cameroon. He was replaced at half-time against Peru. Italy went through behind Poland only because they had scored two goals to Cameroon’s one.
Italy’s second-round group opened with a 2-1 win over the holders, Argentina, in which Claudio Gentile man-marked a twenty-one-year-old Diego Maradona. Rossi still had not scored. Italian critics wanted him dropped; Bearzot kept picking him. Going into the Brazil match, Zico had 4 goals, the same as Zbigniew Boniek and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, and Rossi had none.
Brazil, 5 July: the hat-trick
Brazil had beaten Argentina 3-1 in their second-round opener, so a draw would send Brazil through and Italy needed to win. The Brazil side was the tournament favorite, with Zico, Falcão and Sócrates, who scored 2 goals in Spain.
- 5th minute, 1-0. Rossi headed in Antonio Cabrini’s cross.
- 12th minute, 1-1. Sócrates equalized.
- 25th minute, 2-1. Rossi intercepted a loose pass from Toninho Cerezo in the Brazilian area and finished.
- 68th minute, 2-2. Falcão scored from twenty yards. At 2-2 Brazil were through.
- 74th minute, 3-2. After a scramble that followed an Italian corner, Rossi got the ball in from close range.
Dino Zoff saved from Oscar in the closing minutes to protect the lead. Rossi said afterwards that the first goal gave him back his confidence, and that it was the most important goal of his career.
Poland and West Germany: the other three
On 8 July in Barcelona, Rossi scored both goals in a 2-0 semi-final win over Poland, in the 22nd and 73rd minutes. It was a rematch of Italy’s goalless opening game, and this time Rossi decided it.
The final, on 11 July in Madrid, was goalless at half-time after Cabrini missed a penalty. Rossi broke the deadlock in the 57th minute, heading in from Gentile’s free-kick cross. Marco Tardelli and Alessandro Altobelli added the other Italian goals in a 3-1 win over West Germany, Italy’s third World Cup. The nickname that stuck was Pablito.
Records and rankings
Nine goals leave Rossi one short of the ten needed to join the list of players with ten or more World Cup goals, so he is not in that table. Over 14 matches his rate is 0.64 goals per match: above Lionel Messi’s 0.62 and below Miroslav Klose’s 0.67.
On FIFA’s all-time list of 19 July 2026 he is one of eleven players on nine goals, behind the 17 who have ten or more; Roberto Baggio and Christian Vieri are the other Italians among them.
| Player | World Cups played | Matches | Goals | Goals per match |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paolo Rossi | 1978, 1982 | 14 | 9 | 0.64 |
| Roberto Baggio | 1990, 1994, 1998 | 16 | 9 | 0.56 |
| Christian Vieri | 1998, 2002 | 9 | 9 | 1.00 |
Italy failed to qualify for the 2026 tournament, so the Italian record the three share did not move that summer. Rossi’s own totals are final: he died on 9 December 2020, aged 64.
In Spain he won the Golden Boot as top scorer, ahead of Rummenigge on five goals and Boniek and Zico on four each, and the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player. He also won the 1982 Ballon d’Or as European Footballer of the Year. FIFA’s 2024 retrospective counts no other Golden Boot winner who needed as many matches to score his first goal of the tournament: Rossi’s came in Italy’s fifth match.
Italy scored twelve goals in Spain. Rossi scored half of them, and all six came in the last three matches, in which Italy scored eight. He opened the scoring in each of those three matches.
Sources and method
- FIFA, “Rossi rallies from a famine to a golden feast”, 1 July 2024: the recall ahead of Pruzzo, the goal drought, Rossi’s own words and the Golden Boot comparison.
- FIFA, all-time leading scorers, 19 July 2026: Rossi’s nine goals in 14 matches (three in 1978, six in 1982), the totals of Baggio and Vieri, and the Messi and Klose figures. FIFA, RSSSF and Wikipedia agree on Rossi’s totals.
- RSSSF match-by-match records for 1978, 1982 and 1986: line-ups, substitutions, scores and scorers, and Rossi’s unused place in the 1986 squad; RSSSF’s FIFA awards list for the 1978 ranking and the 1982 Golden Ball.
- Wikipedia, for Rossi’s career, the 1980 ban and how the matches unfolded: Paolo Rossi, Claudio Gentile, Italy v Brazil (1982) and the 1982 final.
Counts cover World Cup final tournaments only, not qualifying, and a match counts when Rossi played in it. Goals per match are our arithmetic, rounded to two decimals. More in How we verify.
Match, award and squad pages
- Wikipedia match pages behind the two match logs: 1978 Group 1, 1978 Group A, 1978 knockout stage, 1982 Group 1, 1982 Group C and 1982 knockout stage.
- Wikipedia on the 1978 best-player vote: 1978 FIFA World Cup and FIFA World Cup awards.
- Wikipedia squad lists, for players’ ages and Rossi’s place in the 1986 squad: 1978, 1982 and 1986.
- RSSSF match-by-match records used to recount Baggio and Vieri: 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002.
Where the sources disagree
| Detail | RSSSF | Wikipedia | Used here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rossi’s goal against France, 2 June 1978 | 30′ | 29′ | No minute given |
| Rossi’s goal against Austria, 18 June 1978 | 14′ | 13′ | No minute given |
| Rossi replaced against Argentina, 29 June 1982 | 81′ | 80′ | “Late”, no minute |
| Rossi’s first goal against Brazil, 5 July 1982 | 8′ (header) | 5′ | 5th minute, as in Wikipedia’s match and final articles |
| Rossi’s third goal against Brazil, 5 July 1982 | 74′ | 74′ (match article); 75′ (1982 final article) | 74th minute, as in RSSSF and the match article |
| 1978 best-player vote | Golden Ball given since 1978; Rossi Silver Ball | Paolo Rossi article: Silver Ball, second-best player. 1978 World Cup and World Cup awards articles: unofficial selection; Golden Ball first awarded in 1982 | Second-best player, journalists’ vote; no ball named |