BeCuriouzLearn something new every day
The biggest upset in World Cup history isn't what you think
💡 The USA's 1-0 win over England in 1950 — scored by a part-time dishwasher — is arguably the biggest upset in World Cup history.
Ask most people about the biggest World Cup upset and they'll mention Saudi Arabia beating Argentina in 2022, or Senegal beating France in 2002. But football historians point to November 1950, when the United States beat England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
The context makes it staggering. England was one of the birthplaces of football, with a team full of professional players from the world's best league. The USA team was made up of part-time players — a dishwasher, a mail carrier, a hearse driver. England was a 500-to-1 favorite. When the result was wired to newspapers back in England, editors assumed it was a typo and printed the score as "10-1" in England's favor.
The only goal was scored by Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian-born dishwasher who headed in a deflected shot in the 38th minute. England bombarded the American goal for the remaining 52 minutes but couldn't equalize. The result remains a benchmark for the word "upset" — a reminder that football's beauty lies in its radical unpredictability.