Who was the first player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup match?

Bert Patenaude was the first player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup match, for the United States against Paraguay in 1930.

Patenaude scored all three goals in the USA’s 3–0 victory at Montevideo’s Estadio Gran Parque Central on 17 July 1930. His first came in the tenth minute, his second in the fifteenth, and his third in the fiftieth. The performance occurred during the inaugural World Cup in Uruguay.

For decades, the record was disputed because the second American goal had been credited variously to Patenaude, teammate Tom Florie or Paraguay’s Aurelio González. That uncertainty allowed Argentina’s Guillermo Stábile, who scored three goals against Mexico two days later, to be listed for many years as the first World Cup hat-trick scorer.

FIFA resolved the dispute on 10 November 2006, officially reattributing the second goal to Patenaude. The correction confirmed his place at the start of the World Cup’s hat-trick record.