Hossam Hassan
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.