Since the inception of international association football matches in 1872, 59 England male footballers have scored three or more goals (a hat-trick) in a game. The first players to score a hat-trick for England were Howard Vaughton and Arthur Alfred Brown, both Aston Villa players; in a friendly match against Ireland in 1882, they scored nine goals between them.[1] Four players, Vaughton, Steve Bloomer, Willie Hall and Malcolm Macdonald, have scored five goals in one match. Jimmy Greaves has scored the greatest number of hat-tricks, with six. Five players, Albert Allen, Frank Bradshaw, Walter Gilliat, John Veitch and John Yates, have scored hat-tricks on their only international appearance.
In the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final, Geoff Hurst scored a hat-trick, generally considered one of the most famous of all time.[2][3][4] The most recent hat-trick was scored by Bukayo Saka in a European Championship qualifier against North Macedonia in June 2023.
England have conceded eleven hat-tricks since 1872, the most recent being scored by Zlatan Ibrahimović who scored four goals in a 4–2 defeat by Sweden in a friendly match in November 2012. Richard Hofmann was the first player from outside the Home Nations to score a hat-trick against England, scoring three times for Germany in a friendly match in May 1930. Previously only the Scottish players John McDougall, George Ker, John Smith, Robert Smyth McColl and Alex Jackson had scored hat-tricks against England.
England have conceded eleven hat-tricks, the first five of which were scored by players from Scotland. England have lost ten of the eleven matches in which they have conceded a hat-trick; the other was a 3–3 draw against Germany in 1930.
The following table lists the number of hat-tricks scored by English
players who have scored two or more hat-tricks.[43]
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