Hungary's 10-1 demolition of El Salvador on June 15, 1982, remains the highest-scoring World Cup match ever played. The result in Elche, Spain, still stands as the only time one team has scored 10 goals in a World Cup game.

That is why the match still draws attention more than 40 years later. Hungary led 3-0 at halftime and then added seven more after the break, with goals from Tibor Nyilasi, Gabor Poloskei, Laszlo Fazekas, Jozsef Toth, Lazar Szentes and Laszlo Kiss. El Salvador's lone reply came from Luis Ramirez Zapata, but the scoreline was already out of reach long before the final whistle.

For readers searching for the record, the answer is simple: no other nation has matched Hungary's 10 goals in a single World Cup match. The biggest winning margin in the tournament remains 9 goals, a mark recognized by Guinness World Records and FIFA, which is why the 10-1 result sits in a category of its own even now.

Kiss gave the game its sharpest edge. Coming off the bench, he scored a hat-trick in seven minutes, the fastest in World Cup history and the only hat-trick ever scored by a substitute. It was the sort of burst that can turn a rout into a footnote or a record into a memory, except this one changed the record book and has not been touched since.

The contradiction is what keeps the story alive. Hungary set a scoring record that still survives, yet the team did not advance beyond the group stage after later losing to Argentina and drawing with Belgium. The performance was historic, but it did not carry Hungary forward, which is part of why the match endures: it was both the peak of the campaign and, in practical terms, not enough.

There is no sequel to this record on the schedule, and no sign of one. Germany's 8-0 win over Saudi Arabia in 2002 and Spain's 7-0 victory over Costa Rica in 2022 came closer in margin, but not in total goals. For now, Hungary's night in Elche remains the benchmark every other World Cup scoring spree is measured against.