After the group stage matches, several players challenged the opposing defenses with their sprint. If one could think that a Kylian Mbappé would be first, it is not so. The gold medal in the sprint goes to a Ghanaian, Sulemana Kamaldeen.
13 out of the 832 players at this World Cup exceeded the speed of 35 km/h, or 1.56%. If we look at these sprinters, there is only one group that does not have one: Group C with Argentina, Poland, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
For the rest, if two players (Alphonso Davies et Nico Williams) almost proved to be the fastest, they were beaten on the wire by Sulemana Kamaldeen. The Ghanaian managed to run at 35.7 km/h on the final day against Uruguay.
On the Belgian side, the player to have been the fastest is Yannick Carrasco. The Atletico player reached the speed of 33.8 km/h during the match against Canada.
If it is already a good speed, it is however not the best of all time. In 2021, the newspaper the Gazzetta dello Sport had achieved a ranking of the fastest speeds during a match. And at this little game, it’s Cristiano Ronaldo which had been flashed at 38.6 km/h, in front of Kylian Mbappe (38 km/h) et Arjen Robben (37.08 km/h).
For comparison, during his world record in Berlin over 100 m in 9.58 seconds, Usain Bolt had run at an average speed of 37.58 km/h with a top speed of almost 45 km/h.
