Hungary 10 El Salvador 1 (June 15, 1982)

As it stands this is the only time a team has scored 10 goals at the World Cup finals in one game and is also the joint biggest win.

Laszlo Kiss scored a hat-trick for the Hungarians, who despite this huge victory would still tumble out of the group stage after a 4-1 defeat against world champions Argentina and a 1-1 draw against Belgium.

Obviously they went home at the same time as El Salvador, who impressively off the back of this disaster only lost to Belgium 1-0 and Argentina 2-0. Luis Ramirez scored their only strike against Hungary, and he wasn’t going to let the fact they were already 5-0 down ruin his celebration.

Maldives 0 Iran 17 (June 2, 1997)

These days the Asia section of qualifying for the World Cup is a much neater structure, but back in 1997 it gave us some ridiculous matches that made a mockery of the first group stage.

One such clash was the opening game in Group 2 when Iran travelled to Damascus to effortlessly place 17 goals past a hapless Maldives team. The Iranians were a handy side and would eventually reach France 98 and their first World Cup in 24 years.

The Maldives looked horribly out of place and in losing 12-0 (twice) to Syria ended the group stage having lost all six games, failing to score and conceding a horrendous 59 goals – an average of just under 10-a-game.

American Samoa 0 Australia 31 (April 11, 2001)

You know you have just seen a total annihilation when even the operator of the scoreboard loses count.

Australia’s 31-0 win over American Samoa in a 2002 World Cup qualifier is a record for an international match and saw Archie Thompson score a ridiculous 13 goals during the game.

The result came just two days after the Aussies beat Tonga 22-0 and they would finish the first qualifying stage with a record of four wins from as many matches - scoring 66 goals in the process.

To sum up the level of quality of their opponents, Australia still didn’t reach the World Cup.

San Marino 0 Germany 13 (September 6, 2006)

San Marino have always been the whipping boys when it comes to qualifying for major tournaments in Europe, but even they hit a new low during the race to reach Euro 2008.

Lucas Podolski top scored with four strikes during this match in what is the current biggest winning margin in qualification for the European Championships and San Marino’s biggest defeat.

The greatest surprise came in the return fixture at Nuremburg when the Germans took as much as 45 minutes to fire in their first goal in a 6-0 victory.

Holland 11 San Marino 0 (September 2, 2011)

For those that remember Euro 2012, Holland departed the tournament in disastrous fashion after losing all three group games in Poland/Ukraine.

Qualifying for the European Championships was a completely different matter though as they won their first nine matches to easily reach the finals.