Ousmane Dembélé lights up France's World Cup match with historic first-half hat trick

Ousmane Dembélé produced the second-fastest hat trick in World Cup history on Sunday night, leading France to a 3-0 win over Norway. He completed the treble by the 32nd minute, after France had already gone 1-0 up, and only Erich Probst, who scored for Austria against Czechoslovakia in the 1954 World Cup, was quicker.

The performance was classic Dembélé. He scored his first with a sharp, powerful right-footed strike into the far corner, then added his next two with curling left-footed finishes to the far post past Egil Selvik. The article noted that Dembélé, named 2025 World Player of the Year, did it in the style everyone has come to expect from him.

Former Scotland international Pat Nevin told the BBC: “It’s incredible. It’s really like Groundhog Day. Every time Dembélé gets the ball on the right we already know what he is going to do, his teammates, the defenders, everyone in the stadium... and he still does it, cuts inside and curls it into the far corner. Wow.”

Dembélé became only the third French player to score a World Cup hat trick. Kylian Mbappé did it in the 2022 final, and Just Fontaine did it twice in 1958. It was also the first first-half hat trick at a World Cup since Oleg Salenko did it for Russia in 1994.