Raheem Sterling became the 15th Chelsea player to score a goal for his country at the World Cup when he found the net during England's 6-2 trouncing of Iran in Qatar on Monday.
The Blues forward made his mark in first-half stoppage time when he picked up his first-ever goal at the quadrennial tournament by volleying home Harry Kane’s cross to put the Three Lions in full control of the Group B game.
In giving his team a 3-0 lead, Sterling joined the venerable list of Chelsea stars who have netted goals at the world’s biggest football tournament over the past three decades.
Although the club has been represented at the World Cup since Roy Bentley appeared for England in Brazil in 1950, it took nearly half a century before one of our players got a goal in the competition.
While it happened in a game that involved England, the honour fell to Romania’s Dan Petrescu who scored in Toulouse on 22 June 1998.
With the teams deadlocked in the final minute, the wing-back made a diagonal run into the box to meet Dorinel Munteanu’s lofted pass, winning a tussle for the ball with his Blues team-mate Graeme Le Saux before slotting it between the legs of David Seaman as his team won 2-1 to sealed their progression to the knockout rounds.
You can view highlights of the match here
After waiting 48 years for the first goal by a Chelsea player at the World Cup, it took just one more day before the second arrived, courtesy of Norway’s Tore Andre Flo.
With his team trailing against defending champions Brazil in Marseille, the lanky striker showed the world some of his deft skills as he shook off the challenge of Junior Baiano and cut inside the defender before firing past Claudio Taffarel. It levelled the score as the Norwegians scored twice in the last seven minutes for a surprise 2-1 win.
While there were no goals scored by Chelsea players in 2002, the tournament in Germany four years later produced four different Blues scorers.
Hernan Crespo was in fine form at the tournament as he bagged three goals for Argentina in victories against Ivory Coast, Serbia and Montenegro and Mexico as the South American side reached the quarter-finals.
Two other Blues were on target in Group C. Didier Drogba scored Ivory Coast’s only goal in their 2-1 loss to Argentina and Arjen Robben fired home the winner in Netherlands' 1-0 triumph against Serbia and Montenegro.
However, the pick of the bunch was an outrageous long-range effort by Joe Cole which opened the scoring in England’s 2-2 draw with Sweden. After shining for Chelsea in our Premier League-winning campaign before the World Cup, he provided a brilliant encore in Cologne, chesting down a clearance 35 yards out before smashing a volley past Andreas Isaksson into the top corner of the Swedish net.
Drogba is the only Chelsea player to score at two different World Cups so far as he was also on target in South Africa in 2010 in Ivory Coast’s 2-1 loss to Brazil.
His Ivorian team-mate Salomon Kalou also scored in their 3-0 victory over North Korea while Florent Malouda got France’s only goal of the tournament in a 2-1 loss to the host nation.
Brazil hosted the next edition in 2014 and two of their Chelsea players were on target twice on home soil. David Luiz scored in the last-16 against Chile and quarter-final against Colombia while Oscar was on target in the tournament opener against Croatia and the semi-final against Germany.
Unfortunately for the hosts, his latter strike was scant consolation as they suffered an embarrassing 7-1 loss in Belo Horizonte to Germany, with Andre Schurrle scoring their last two goals after coming on as a substitute.
The German winger netted three goals at the tournament after also scoring in the 2-1 win over Algeria in the round of 16, and he assisted on Mario Gotze’s winner in the final against Argentina as Germany were crowned world champions for the fourth time.
Fernando Torres also scored in Brazil but his strike in Spain’s 3-0 win over Australia was not enough to prevent the defending champions from bowing out in the opening round.
Chelsea’s only two scorers in Russia four years ago were Belgian. Eden Hazard scored twice and Michy Batshuayi also got on the scoresheet in a 5-2 win over Tunisia during the group stage as the Red Devils enjoyed an excellent run to the semi-finals.
Hazard then capped off a fine individual performance at the tournament by getting his side’s second in their 2-0 victory over England in the third-place play-off. He joined Crespo and Schurrle as the club’s top scorers in the World Cup with three goals each.