Football Kitchen

🚀🇨🇻 Sidny Lopes Cabral’s goal in the Cape Verde-Argentina match wins the official goal of the tournament by FIFA for the 2026 World Cup ❤️

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🚨 The Pharaohs of Egypt became the first African team to play at the World Cup when they participated in the tournament in 1934.

There were no group stages in that tournament, as it started off with the knockout stages. Egypt lost 4-2 to Hungary in the round of 16.

It took another 34 solid years before another Africa country made it to the FIFA World Cup tournament.

In 1970, Morocco became the second African country to play at the World Cup while Zaire (now DR Congo) became the third in 1974.

Did you know?
France and Italy are the only teams to face each other in a penalty shoot-out on more than one occasion at the World Cup.

In the 1998 World Cup quarter-final, France won 4-3 on penalties after the game ended in a goalless draw.

In the 2006 World Cup final, Italy won 5-3 on penalties after the game ended in a 1-1 draw.

💞 Argentina's Gabriel Batistuta scored 56 goals in 78 matches for the National team. He was the country's all-time top scorer before Lionel Messi.

He is the only player to score a hat-trick in two different FIFA World Cup editions.

He scored his first hat-trick against Greece in the 1994 FIFA World Cup in USA on June 21, 1994, and his second against Jamaica in the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France on June 21, 1998.

🇿🇦 🇲🇽 For the first time in Women AFCON history, a married couple featured in the same Women's Africa Cup of Nations match.

💍 South Africa's Robyn Moodaly and Gabriela Salgado didn't just play together for Banyana Banyana. They made history together.

⚽ In their Group A opener against Tanzania, both women stepped onto the pitch — one in the starting XI, the other coming off the bench for an emotional return from injury.

🥇 It's a first: no married couple had ever featured in the same match in WAFCON history.

💔 The result didn't go South Africa's way — Tanzania stunned the reigning champions 2-1 in Casablanca.

Did you know?
Nigeria's Stephen Keshi and Egypt's Mahmoud El-Gohary are the only two people to have won the AFCON as both player and manager.

A striker, El-Gohary won the AFCON with Egypt in 1959- and also emerged the tournament's top scorer.

As a manager, he won the AFCON with Egypt in 1998 after they defeated South Africa 2-0 in the final.

Keshi played as a defender and won the AFCON with Nigeria in 1994.

As a manager, he was in charge of the Nigerian national team that defeated Burkina Faso 1-0 in the 2013 AFCON final.

Aged 74, El-Gohary passed away on 21 August 2012, reportedly as a result of a brain stroke.

Aged 54, Keshi passed away on 7 June 2016, reportedly as a result of cardiac arrest.

💥 Mark Hughes — the footballer who played two official games in two different countries for two different teams on the same day.

On November 11, 1987, Mark Hughes pulled off a remarkable double: he played a full 90 minutes for Wales in a European Championship qualifier against Czechoslovakia in Prague (a 2-0 loss), then rushed by car, private jet, and Porsche to Munich to join Bayern Munich's German Cup match against Borussia Mönchengladbach — arriving in time for the second half.

With Hughes on the pitch, Bayern completed a comeback, winning 3-2 after extra time. Two countries, two competitive matches, one day.

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🚨 Over the years, some goalkeepers have employed the tactics of dancing during penalty shoot-out to distract their opponents.

Bruce Grobbelaar famously did the "spaghetti legs" dance during Liverpool's 4-2 penalty shootout win against Roma in the 1984 European Cup final.

Jerzy Dudek also did something similar during Liverpool's 3-2 penalty shoot-out win against AC Milan in the 2005 UCL final.

Australian goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne is also known to employ such strategy, as was seen in Australia's 5-4 penalty shootout win against Peru in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.