Only three footballers have managed to score three goals in the most important club match of the year.
Neither Messi nor Cristiano: the players who have scored a Champions League final hat-trick
Scoring three goals in 90 minutes has never been an easy task, but doing it in a Champions League* final is something only a handful of players have managed throughout history. Beyond the inherent difficulty of finding the net at that stage of the competition, the nerves and pressure that come with trying to make your team champions of Europe add another layer of complexity.
When it comes to Champions League records, the conversation usually begins with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. The two superstars have dominated the competition’s modern era and share the record for the most Champions League hat-tricks, with eight apiece.
Yet neither of them was able to achieve the remarkable feat of scoring three goals in a European Cup final.
A hat-trick record that dates back to the 1960s
In fact, no player has accomplished it in the modern Champions League era. There has not been a hat-trick in a final since the competition adopted its current name in 1992, *previously known as The European Cup. The only players ever to reach that milestone were Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás and Pierino Prati, all of whom did so during the 1960s.
What makes the record even more extraordinary is that two of those performances came in the very same game. In the 1959-60 European Cup final, Real Madrid crushed Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3. Di Stéfano scored three times, while Puskás went one better, netting four goals. To this day, he remains the only player ever to score four times in a European Cup final.
Who was the last player to score a European Cup final hat-trick?
A few years later, in 1969, the Santiago Bernabéu witnessed another historic performance. Pierino Prati found the back of the net three times against the Ajax side led by the legendary Rinus Michels. The Italian striker’s hat-trick powered AC Milan to the second of the seven European crowns the club has gone on to win.
More than half a century later, Prati remains the most recent player to score a hat-trick in a European Cup or Champions League final, underlining just how difficult the achievement truly is. Even the greatest scorers of the modern game have been unable to erase a record that has stood since the 1960s.
Could PSG’s Kvaratskhelia, Dembélé, Doué or Arsenal’s Saka, Martinelli, Havertz rewrite the record books on Saturday?
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