CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Which players have scored five goals in a Champions League game? Haaland, Messi...
Manchester City striker Haaland and Messi are two of three players in history to have scored five goals in a Champions League match.
He didn’t appear to be angry but the look on Erling Haaland’s face was that of someone who still feels as if he has plenty to prove. After the Norwegian had scored his fifth goal in the second leg of Manchester City’s Champions League round of 16 thrashing of RB Leipzig, Pep Guardiola decided to give his star striker a rest after 63 minutes of the match. With the tie well and truly over, the former Barcelona coach turned his attentions to City’s FA Cup match against Burnley this coming weekend as the Premier League champions look to complete ‘The Treble’ (Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League). However, he deprived Haaland the opportunity of snatching one record away from the likes of Messi and Champions League ‘specialist’ Cristiano Ronaldo.
Who is the third player to have scored five goals in a Champions League game?
Against RB Leipzig, the Norway international become just the third player in the history of the Champions League (since the tournament was rebranded in 1992) to score five goals in a match. Messi achieved the feat in the second leg of a round of 16 tie for Barcelona against Bayer Leverkusen in 2011-2012, which the Catalans won 7-1 at Camp Nou and 10-2 on aggregate. Brazilian forward Luiz Adriano, meanwhile, notched five times in Shakhtar Donetsk’s group stage match against Bate Borisov in 2014-15, which ended in a 7-0 win for the Ukrainians in Belarus (just in case you’re wondering, Ronaldo’s highest tally was four goals in an 8-0 group stage victory over Malmo when playing for Real Madrid in 2015-16).
With almost half-an-hour left on the clock against the Germans, few would have bet against Haaland setting a new record against an RB Leipzig defence that were all at sea. Could this have been his - and indeed anyone’s - golden opportunity to become the first man to score SIX goals in a Champions League match? Argentina attacker Julián Álvarez came on for the final 27 minutes and Haaland’s dream of scoring a ‘double hat-trick’ was over. Yet he did manage to break one other record nevertheless, becoming the fastest player in the competiton’s history to reach 30 goals.