Thursday, October 6, 2022 – 6:42 PM
ABU DHABI, October 6 / WAM / 27 goals scored by 16 teams at the end of the third round of the group stage matches of the European Champions League, but only 3 of them left a big imprint in the history of the tournament.
Only 45 minutes was enough for Norwegian Erling Haaland to score two goals and contribute to the continuation of his Manchester City team’s victories, as he achieved the third consecutive victory in Group G and kept the full mark, raising his score to 9 points, to approach a huge step from qualifying for the second round (the round of 16).
Manchester City coach Josep Guardiola replaced his young player, Haaland, 22, before the start of the second half of yesterday’s match once morest Copenhagen, Denmark, which ended with Manchester City winning 5-0.
With this double, Haaland raised his score to 28 goals in 22 matches he played in the Champions League; Including 5 goals in the 3 matches he played with Manchester City in the tournament this season following moving to the team in the summer of this year from German Borussia Dortmund.
Halland has surpassed this balance, in just over 3 seasons, what two great players, Uruguayan Luis Suarez and former Brazilian Rivaldo, achieved in the total number of goals in the Champions League over many years of their football career.
Halland scored his goals in the Champions League with 8 goals in 6 matches with his former team Red Bull Salzburg, 15 goals in 13 matches with his former team Dortmund, and 5 goals in 3 matches with his current team, Manchester City.
The average player’s goal in their Champions League matches so far is one goal every 59 minutes and 30 seconds.
The European Union for the game (UEFA) indicated that Haaland scored 20 goals with the left foot and 5 goals with the right foot, while the remaining three goals came from the head.
During his journey to achieve this outcome, Halland scored 11 of the 13 different teams he faced in the Champions League, the most recent of whom was Copenhagen, Denmark, yesterday evening, knowing that Manchester City is one of the two teams that Halland failed to score when he faced them in the Champions League.
In another match yesterday, the tournament was on a date with another goal that has an imprint in the history of the tournament, following Argentine striker Lionel Messi scored a goal for Paris Saint-Germain in the match in which the team drew 1-1 with its Portuguese host Benfica, bringing the number of teams that Messi scored in the Champions League to 40 teams, whether during his previous participations over the years with his former club Barcelona, or during the past two seasons and the current one with his current team.
No player has ever scored once morest 40 teams in the history of his participation in the Champions League, but the goal was not enough to win, as Benfica grabbed a valuable equalizer to deprive Saint-Germain of achieving the full mark in the first three rounds of the group stage of the competition.
Assem El-Khouly/Ahmed Zahran
