This is a progressive list of men's association footballers who have held or co-held the world record for international caps, beginning with Billy MacKinnon, the only man to play in all of Scotland's first seven internationals.
Contents
Criteria
The criteria used by national FAs in considering a match as a full international were not historically fixed. Particularly for the early decades, and until more recently for FAs outside UEFA and CONMEBOL, counts of caps were often considered unreliable. RSSSF and IFFHS have spent much effort trying to produce definitive lists of full international matches, and corresponding data on players' international caps and goals. Using this data, the following records can be retrospectively produced. Note that, at the time, these records may not have been recognised.
One point of note is that early matches by the England Amateur side were played against the full national side of opponents. These matches are counted as full internationals by the IFFHS and the opposing FAs, though not by the (English) FA. This affects Vivian Woodward, who won 23 full caps and 30 amateur caps; the IFFHS considers him as the record-holder from 1909, when his total of 31 caps included 11 amateur matches.
Before 1978, the world record holder was always European, except when Ángel Romano narrowly overtook Imre Schlosser. After 1978, many sources, including FIFA and the Guinness Book of Records, reported subsequent European cap records as world records. Subsequent validation of the caps claimed by Cha Bum-Kun, Hussein Saeed, Majed Abdullah, and Adnan Al Talyani has shown that, even stripping out ineligible matches, these players exceeded the contemporary European counts. Similarly, Hossam Hassan of Egypt was reported as having broken Lothar Matthäus' putative record of 150 caps in 2001.
World record
Notes: