Group C of the 2018 FIFA World Cup took place from 16 to 26 June 2018. The group consisted of eventual champions France, Australia, Peru, and Denmark. The top two teams, France and Denmark, advanced to the round of 16.
France, Denmark, and the winners of the play-off between Australia and Peru (ultimately Australia) were drawn into the same group again for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The eighteenth edition of the South American Championship was held in Santiago, Chile from 14 January to 28 February. This tournament was an extra edition, with no trophy handed to the winners, but considered official by CONMEBOL.
The participating countries were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia (for the first time), Ecuador, and Uruguay. Paraguay and Peru withdrew from the tournament.
Gerd Müller was a German professional footballer who represented the West Germany national football team as a striker between 1966 and 1974. He scored his first international goal on 8 April 1967, when he netted four goals in a UEFA Euro 1968 qualifier against Albania. Since then, Müller become his country's all-time top scorer with 68 goals in 62 games until being overtaken by Miroslav Klose on 6 June 2014. He held the record for goals scored in FIFA World Cup tournaments between 1974 and 2006. This record was bettered in 2006 by Brazil's Ronaldo, and eight years later by fellow countryman Klose.
Müller netted eight international hat-tricks, which is a national record and the third-best in Europe, behind Sweden's Sven Rydell with nine and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo with ten. On half of those occasions he added a fourth goal in the same match, against Albania, Cyprus, the Soviet Union and Switzerland. This tally includes back-to-back hat-tricks at the 1970 FIFA World Cup against Bulgaria and Peru, being the only player alongside Sándor Kocsis to have done so.