The mystery of the World Cup’s first hat-trick – and how the truth emerged 76 years later
The mystery of the World Cup’s first hat-trick – and how the truth emerged 76 years later
Bert Patenaude (centre) scored three goals against Paraguay at Montevideo's Estadio Parque Central in 1930 James Brown Family Collection
By Peter CarlineJune 22, 2026 UpdatedBert Patenaude is perhaps the first and only recipient of a posthumous hat-trick. That he scored it at a World Cup only enhances the story’s mystique.
A hat-trick, after all, is a magical thing — a player managing to score three goals in a single match. A World Cup hat-trick is even more magical. Pele is the youngest to score one in the men’s World Cup; Lionel Messi the oldest. Leonidas, Ademir, Eusebio and Michel have one; Sandor Kocsis, Just Fontaine, Gerd Muller and Gabriel Batistuta have two. Each has its own narrative and history. But none is as curious as the first.
On a boggy pitch at Montevideo’s Estadio Parque Central, Patenaude was 20 when he hit the treble on July 17, 1930, as the United States swept Paraguay aside 3-0. FIFA incorrectly recorded the feat, and for 76 years the accolade of scorer of the World Cup’s first hat-trick was bestowed on Argentina’s Guillermo Stabile, who scored his two days after Patenaude’s.
In November 2006 — some 32 years after Patenaude’s death — FIFA put the record straight. His grandson, Bert Patenaude III, found out about it by reading the New York Times.
Born in November 1909 in Fall River, Mass., Patenaude took up soccer while delivering groceries on a bicycle, aged 14. Waved over by a group of boys to make up the numbers, six hours later, he had lost a job but found his calling.
Brave and intuitive with a knack for being in the right place at the right time, standing 5ft 8in (172cm), he was good in the air and formed a prolific partnership with Billy Gonsalves, nicknamed the Babe Ruth of U.S. Soccer. Patenaude won three American Soccer League titles with the Fall River Marksmen from 1928 to 1930.
“Bert was just a monster goalscorer,” says James Brown, vice-president of the Society for American Soccer History (SASH), of a player who scored 112 times in 114 Marksmen appearances.
“Bert was always in the mix, you know? He did not shy away from anybody. He was a smaller guy, but he was really tough. And he had the footwork.”
With prolific striker Archie Stark declining the invitation to the World Cup (he wanted to establish an automobile business instead), Patenaude was the youngest member of a U.S. squad that included five Scottish-born players, as well as George Moorhouse, from Liverpool in England.
“The team was kind of made up of every walk of life,” said Brown, whose grandfather Jim Brown scored for the U.S. in the 1930 World Cup semi-final and went on to play for Manchester United, Brentford and Tottenham Hotspur.
“There were five Scots who came over. My grandfather was the last of those to come over on that team. They came over when they were kids or teenagers or in their early 20s. They wanted a better life.”
The United States 1930 World Cup squad. Bert Patenaude is third right on the front row, with Billy Gonsalves behind his left shoulder (US Soccer)A tournament of invitation rather than qualification, the inaugural World Cup comprised 13 teams after Japan and Siam (now Thailand) withdrew and Egypt missed out due to a storm in the Mediterranean. Only four European nations — Belgium, France, Romania and Yugoslavia — competed. England, Hungary and Italy were among those who shunned advances to play.
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As the Great Depression took hold, the United States were not inclined to follow suit. With bills for travel and hotel expenses paid for by the host nation as part of Uruguay’s centenary celebrations, their 16-man squad and their Mexican counterparts boarded the SS Munargo in Hoboken, N.J. on June 7, 1930.
The U.S. Football Association paid married squad members $375 (£280) for the three-month trip, and singles earned $250. In perhaps unrelated news, 23-year-old full-back Alex Wood tied the knot a week before departure.
They spent 18 days on the cruise liner, which featured a Georgian lounge and a tennis court. Free from prohibition, for some it was their first chance to sample alcohol legally. Gonsalves grew a moustache, they exercised on deck, and stopped in Bermuda and Brazil on the journey south to the Rio de la Plata.
Coached by Scottish-born Robert Millar, Wilfred Cummings was manager in the general sense and wrote an evocative 16-page report on the tour.
Things began well. In their opening Group 4 game, Patenaude scored the third in a 3-0 victory over Belgium at the Estadio Parque Central. In doing so, U.S. goalkeeper Jimmy Douglas claimed the World Cup’s first clean sheet.
Bert Patenaude tussles for the ball against Belgium goalkeeper Arnold Badjou (James Brown Family Collection)Next up were Paraguay, runners-up in the 1929 South American Championship.
In front of an 18,306 crowd at Parque Central, U.S. players and Cummings were in no doubt as to the goalscorer’s identity. Patenaude hit the opener in the 10th minute, set up by midfielder Andy Auld’s cross from the left. Five minutes later, the second came from the same flank, Tom Florie the provider. The third arrived five minutes after half-time, Auld again assisting after a run down the left.
The U.S. FA was also in little doubt. Likewise, Brazil’s O Estadio do Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires newspaper La Prensa, which published diagrams of each goal alongside the match report.
“Our team was indeed flashy and after gathering three markers which Patenaude crashed against the rigging from wing centers we rested on our oars to sort of save ourselves for the semi-finals,” Cummings said.
La Prensa’s illustrations of Bert Patenaude’s hat-trick against Paraguay (James Brown Family Collection)Yet FIFA’s official report disagreed, crediting the second to captain Florie. The Associated Press did likewise. To others it was an own goal by Aurelio Gonzalez, who would coach Paraguay at the 1958 World Cup.
Without numbers on the United States’ all-white shirts (they arrived for the 1950 World Cup), only one U.S. player, James Gentle, spoke Spanish, so discussion with tournament officials was limited. Televised replays were a futuristic dream.
Matters were not helped by events two days later. ‘El Infiltrador’ Stabile scored a hat-trick on his Argentina debut during their 6-3 group win over Mexico. And that, apparently, was that as far as the history books were concerned.
That is until the late American soccer historian Colin Jose intervened. A chance meeting with Arnie Oliver — a member of the U.S. 1930 World Cup squad — at the American Soccer Hall of Fame alerted Jose to the anomaly. He compiled a dossier and sent it to FIFA in April 1995.
“When they said, ‘We will have our experts look into it’, I was thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, sure you will’,” Jose told the Guardian in 2015. “But they did.”
Brown takes on the tale. “Along with the articles that he had found with the diagrams of the goals that were scored by Bert, there were also eyewitness confirmations from my grandfather and Arnie Oliver in two separate interviews in 1987 and ’88,” he said.
Jim Brown (white kit) celebrates one of Bert Patenaude’s goals against Paraguay (James Brown Family Collection)As for the United States, local rivalry dictated that the overwhelming majority of a 72,886 partisan crowd were behind them in the first semi-final against continental champions Argentina. With the potential for violence, everyone — players included — was frisked for weaponry outside the ground before kick-off.
Playing for the first time at the new stadium, the U.S. were at a disadvantage. “The immense size of the playing pitch was treating us badly,” Cummings wrote about a surface 100 yards (91 metres) wide and 138 yards long.
A more severe issue quickly became apparent. In an era without substitutes, Belgian referee John Langenus took a laissez-faire approach to what Cummings called “the vigorous side-swiping Argentinians”.
The United States team and coaches before the World Cup semi-final in 1930 (James Brown Family Collection)Within four minutes, goalkeeper Douglas suffered a knee injury. After 19, centre-half Raphael Tracey had his right leg broken. He played on, with Gonsalves moved back into defence.
It was a feat in itself that the U.S. were only 1-0 down at half-time. Tracey was taken off but the injuries kept coming. Auld was booted in the mouth and lost four teeth. He played on with a rag in his mouth, but only after having smelling salts deliberately knocked into his eyes while undergoing treatment.
It ended 6-1 with Stabile, the first Golden Boot winner, adding two more to his eventual eight-goal tally. Brown scored late for the U.S..
“They crippled Douglas, deliberately, they broke Tracey’s leg, they hit Auld,” Gonsalves said after the match.
In a repeat of the 1928 Olympic football final, Uruguay beat Argentina 4-2 to win the first World Cup. As for the United States, they headed home on August 5. On their way, they faced Brazil in a friendly, Patenaude scoring twice in the 4-3 defeat. Upon returning on September 6, Patenaude had earned four U.S. caps in South America, netting six times. He would not appear for the national team again.
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Following his retirement in 1936, he worked as a painter and wallpaper hanger in Fall River. A proud man, Patenaude was not the sort of chap to brag about his career.
Yet during Mexico 1970 he took umbrage at a report in the Fall River Herald News which claimed West Germany’s Muller scored the first World Cup hat-trick. He visited the newspaper’s office.
Under the headline: “First World Cup ‘Hat trick’ by Bert Patenaude of FR in 1930”, on June 11, 1970, Herald sports editor Frank McGrath wrote: “Bert was going to let the Muller claim go without protest, but friends insisted that he make public the fact that the first World Cup “hat trick” was by Patenaude, not Muller.” In Mexico, Muller followed up his treble against Bulgaria on June 7 with another against Peru three days later.
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There is nothing to herald Patenaude’s feat in Montevideo, nor in Fall River, where he lived until his death on November 4, 1974, his 65th birthday.
Nowadays, Fall River is a town of a little under 100,000 people, shorn of its industrial past. The red granite is long gone, as are the textile factories that once exceeded 250 in number. This year has seen a housing and homelessness crisis and the Spindle City ground to a halt for weeks following 41 inches of snow.
During Patenaude’s heyday, it was an industrial city of 20,000 people, with a thriving textile industry. Immigrants came from England, Scotland and Ireland. There were also French-Canadians, such as the Patenaude family from Quebec, and people of Portuguese origin, such as the Gonsalveses.
“Bert and Billy, they came back, I wouldn’t say to a grand fanfare, but once everyone knew they were back in the city, they had meet-and-greets. Nothing too crazy. But the city would shut down when the club won an elite title or the U.S. Open Cup,” says Derek Goncalves, Fall River resident and SASH historian.
“You went from all this fanfare in the 1930s, and then it died by the ’40s. There was some limelight with Ponta Delgada, a Portuguese club that ended up winning the U.S. Open Cup in 1947. Some of those players played in the upset game against England in the 1950 World Cup.”
The achievements of the 1930 and 1934 U.S. teams are recognised at the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Frisco, Texas (National Soccer Hall of Fame)The centenary of the first World Cup is in 2030. Two men helped put the town on the map. St. Louis-Dispatch’s Dent McSkimming christened them ‘the Fall River Twins’.
“Both of them deserve recognition,” says Goncalves. “Bert Patenaude and Billy Gonsalves were born and raised in the city of Fall River. What they’ve done historically, dating back to what they did in the 1930 World Cup, and what they did at club level should be recognised with a monument or statue.”
It would not be the first time that Patenaude receives an accolade long after it is due.
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