Hat tricks are great, aren't they? And it's been a good week for them in the Champions League: Lionel Messi did one entirely with his right foot, breaking records in the process; Sergio Aguero did one entirely out of frustration with the inadequacies of his colleagues. Here, then, are five more — well, technically at least seven more — triples, quadruples and quintuples from the long and proud European Cup/Champions League tradition of abject humiliation multiple goalscoring.
Alfredo Di Stéfano/Ferenc Puskás, 1959-60 vs. Eintracht Frankfurt
Of the five consecutive European Cups that Real Madrid won back in the earliest days of the competition, this final, the fifth and last, was arguably their signature performance. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the defining games of its time: the pinnacle of Old Football; the capstone of Madrid's obsession with Europe (and Europe's obsession with Madrid); the peak of the careers of some of the greatest players of all time. All played out in front of a crowd of more than 125,000 in Glasgow that included — as you've doubtless heard already, but it's a good fact — a young impressionable Scottish teenager named Alex Ferguson.
It's worth remembering that Frankfurt came into this game in seriously good form. They had dismantled an excellent Rangers side 12-4 on aggregate, including a 6-3 shredding at Ibrox, and so Scottish crowd naturally assumed that they were favourites. Ferguson later recalled going along to the final thinking that the Germans were "gods". And then the titans took them apart. Only three players have ever scored hat tricks in the final of this competition, and two of them did so in this game*. Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás took to the occasion as though it were some kind of personal goalscoring contest.
* The third is Pierino Prati, for AC Milan in the 1969 final. Puskás repeated the feat in 1962 for Madrid against Benfica, the only player to score a hat trick in the final and lose.
After an early goal for the Germans — oh, cruel hope — Di Stéfano struck first and second, tapping in at the far post from a Canário cross, then following up the same player's shot, in the process establishing a one-goal lead for his team and a two-goal lead ahead of his strike partner. But Puskás wasn't to be denied: in the last minute of the first half he whipped home a smart finish from a tricky angle, then ten minutes into the second he converted one of the softest penalties you could ever hope to see. Presumably, in those pre-Twitter days, the telegram services were overwhelmed by outraged Frankfurt fans decrying UEFA's pro-Madrid bias.
Not that it mattered. Hugh McIlvanney later wrote that this was "a sport played to its ultimate standards", and that the crowd "could not conceal an awestruck appreciation of the glories that had been paraded before them". Puskás took the lead with the fifth goal, a sweeping counter-attack followed by a net-tearing celebration, and then sealed the contest — goalscoring and general — with the sixth, a smart finish on the turn. But they saved the best for last: the seventh, Di Stéfano's third, is a goal of quite magisterial contempt.
There are few footballing things more dismissive than a goal straight from kick off. Just scored, have you? Have that. Frankfurt had just grabbed their second — the fools, the fools — and Madrid, though they were in no danger of losing the game, seemed to take affront. Five passes and ten or so seconds later, the ball is in the back of the net, and while there's no such thing as a twenty yard tap-in, there's also no chance the keeper was getting anywhere near this one. The meringues won the trophy 7-3, Puskás won the game 4-3, and Madrid won the hearts of an entire continent. Let's end with a quote from Jimmy Johnstone, another young Scotsman blown away by what he saw:
The match remained the biggest single influence on my career. It was like a fantasy staged in heaven. I had never seen football like it, nor would I ever again. I'll recite the names of that Madrid forward line till the day I die.
Actually, no, let's end with the Daily Mail, doing their bit for cross-border relations.
It's just a pity that the thousands of people at the game, and who have to return to watching Scottish football, must have thought that they were dreaming.
Chortle.
Gerd Müller, Bayern Munich 9-0 AC Omonia, 24 October 1972/Søren Lerby, Ajax 24 October 1979
As is only to be expected in a competition that, for many years, threw the champions of more modest footballing nations up against the continent's elite, a fair few players have plundered five goals in the same game. Some are bona fide legends — Flórián Albert picked up five in 1965-66, while the inevitable Lionel Messi did the same against obscure German outfit Bayer Leverkusen in 2011/12 — while others never made it all the way up the pantheon. Bent Løfqvist of Boldklubben 1913, we honour you here.
Only one side, however, has been on the wrong end of such indignity twice: Cypriots AC Omonia, the other team in Nicosia. Established as a left-wing alternative to APOEL, Omonia won seven league titles in the 1970s and another seven in the 1980s, ensuring them a regular presence in the European Cup. Perhaps unwisely, they occasionally made it through the first round, whereupon they were promptly and resoundingly gubbed by somebody with aspirations and a larger wage bill.
Still, if you're going to ship five goals to somebody, at least make sure they're worth shipping five goals to. In 1972-73, on only their second venture into Europe, they overcame Irish champions Waterford United in the first round and were rewarded with two legs against an almost comically brilliant Bayern Munich side. Off they went to Germany to see Franz Beckenbauer and friends, back they came with a 7-0 defeat resting heavy on their shoulders. Five of those goals went to Gerd Müller, who picked up two more in the return leg; seven goals in 180 minutes is one every 25 minutes or so. Video, sadly, remains elusive, but we can be fairly sure that, Müller being Müller, each and everyone came from about eight yards out and could, were Müller not Müller, easily be taken for a scuff.
Fast forward exactly seven years to 1979-80; apparently the 24th October is not an auspicious day for Cypriot football. Omonia, having spent the intervening seasons winning domestic titles and losing in the first round to other minnows like Cork Celtic, IA Akranes and Juventus, finally overcame Red Boys Differdange — seriously, bring back the old European Cup immediately — and made it once again to the second round. Where they ran into Ajax. Where, more to the point, they ran into Søren Lerby.
Though Lerby doesn't quite have the reputation of Müller, anybody on the look out for a last-70s/early-80s cult hero can relax. Their search is over. The heart of the midfield of the team that would fail to win the 1986 World Cup in utterly adorable fashion, Lerby was among the most driven footballers ever to trot onto a pitch and berate their teammates for not trying hard enough. He once played two games in a single day — an international for Denmark in the afternoon; a cup game for Bayern Munich in the evening — and by all accounts was, as Rob Smyth et al put it in Danish Dynamite, "the ultimate white-line player":
Even by the measure of the day he was seriously, ludicrously hard and had his own unique way of expressing it. Where others flexed their muscles Lerby showed you his shins, playing almost all his career with his socks rolled down and no shin guards to protect his tibia and fibula. Playing without shin pads is illegal now; in the eighties it bordered on lunacy. Lerby didn't care. As with Viv Richards strolling out to bat without a helmet, or Muhammed Ali dancing around the ring with his arms by his sides, the message was clear. Think you can hurt me? Just try it.
God only knows what he did to those poor Cypriots, five times. Again, video is lacking, but if we're assuming Müller's goals were Müller-goals, then we must by extension assume that Lerby's five all started in the centre circle and ended with bloodied bodies littered around the place. Still, we can be sure of one thing. Omonia may not have had the greatest defence in the world, but in their choice of humiliators, they had the most impeccable taste.
Faustino Asprilla, Newcastle 3-2 Barcelona, 17 September 1997
To read down the Newcastle teamsheet for their first game in the rebranded Champions League is to feel the phrase "much-maligned" pop into your mind three times. There's Jon Dahl Tomasson, who was in 2007 named by the BBC as the 36th worst transfer in Premier League history. There's Keith Gillespie, a perfectly decent footballer who had the misfortune to have once been labelled the new George Best. And there, of course, is Faustino Asprilla, who common consent has decided bears the responsibility for Newcastle's blown title campaign in 1995-96.
Whatever the fairness of any of that malignancy — on Asprilla, there's a good counter-argument in the Guardian — nobody ever pretended that those players were without talent. Even Tomasson, though he was hot hot bobbins in England, shone for most of the rest of his career. And against Barcelona, the first two combined to allow the third to score one of the most delirious hat tricks that the rebranded competition has ever seen.
That the first goal came about thanks to a hilarious dive from Asprilla is unfortunate, if you find that sort of thing vexing, or amusing if you don't. Either way, the pace of Asprilla to manufacture himself the opportunity is remarkable. When Tomasson makes his outside of the foot pass into the box, Asprilla is third-favourite to reach the ball; yet he's flying, he gets there first, nudges it past Ruud Hesp, then tucks and rolls for the pleasure of the judges. Hesp gets more on the penalty itself than he did the challenge, but this wasn't his day.
Penalty suitably dispatched, Asprilla and Keith Gillespie then combined to score the same goal, twice. A booming cross from the rightwing, a prodigious leap above a static, stunned defence, and then a perfectly powerful header past the helpless Hesp. Which turned out to be significantly easier to repeat than that last sentence: an even bigger cross, an even better spring, an even mightier header. Just twenty-two minutes separated first goal from third, and all of a sudden Newcastle found themselves three goals to the good against Rivaldo, against Luis Enrique, against Luis Figo, against Louis van Gaal.
It was, as the commentary made clear, "an unbelievable situation", and Asprilla himself was so overcome that he barely made it over his third somersault. But while it was his show, the supporting cast were on song as well: Rob Lee was having the game of his life in midfield, Shay Given was doing likewise in goal, and throughout Asprilla was committing defenders, holding the ball up, and generally making life uncomfortable for the opposition. Though Barcelona got back into the game eventually, Figo scoring their second on a fingernail-endangering 89 minutes, Newcastle held out for a famous win, and perhaps the greatest ever European Cup debut.
By way of a footnote, Asprilla himself was, later on, quite relaxed about the whole business, remarking that "It was a very good game, but it was just a normal game because it wasn't like we won a trophy from it. It was though a very well played game by Newcastle." Come on, Tino. Give yourself a bit more credit.
Dado Pršo, Monaco 8-3 Deportivo la Coruña, 5 November 2003
Ah, Old Football ... wait, 2003?
We include this not because it's a great hat trick in its own right. Dado Pršo scores four goals: the first a decent header from a corner; the second another header (though it looks suspiciously like it comes off his face) following some cosmically bad defending; the third a tap into an empty net; the fourth a smart enough finish but nothing spectacular. Nor do we include this because it was his birthday, though it was and that's nice, no? Nor do we include it for the celebrations, though there's something adorable about the way he realises he should do something special for the fourth, and decides to pretend to machine gun down half the crowd.
No, we include this because of a theory, which we have no way of testing but never mind: the 2003-04 Champions League was the silliest edition of the post-rebrand tournament. The decision to junk the second group stage and embrace a sixteen-team knockout stage paid dividends, and the fields of Europe played host to some ridiculous football. And straight out of the 1950s came Monaco, with a side that were great fun to watch, sort of accidentally got to the final and, before that, over the course of 90 completely ridiculous minutes stuck 8 (that's EIGHT, vidiprinter fans) past Deportivo la Coruña.
Consider what else happened, after the principality had served notice that things were going to be a bit silly this times round. Look at the state of the knockout rounds. Monaco went on to topple Real Madrid before facing Chelsea in the semi-final, the Londoners having made it past their neighbours to the north Arsenal thanks to a goal from Wayne Bridge. A goal from Wayne Bridge. In that semi-final, Chelsea contrived to lose the first leg 3-1 despite playing most of the second half with a man advantage, as Claudio Ranieri went chasing extra goals and ended up managing his way to the sack.
Over on the other half of the draw, even sillier things were happening. Manchester United and Lyon were falling before a young upstart called José Mourinho, while Depor, having recovered from their group stage shellacking, dispatched a pair of Italian giants. And while their triumph over Juventus was fairly conventional, a 1-0 win in each leg seeing them through, the games against Milan stand as one of the all-time great comebacks, as Fran, Juan Carlos Valerón and Walter Pandiani overturned a 4-1 first-leg deficit, winning 4-0 back in Spain.
In short, 2003-04 was a tribute to the early days of European competitions, when unexpected sides contrived freak results, when aristocrats were prone to falling on their faces, when a French club could meet a Portuguese club in the final. Out of all the nonsense came Mourinho, striding out of the mess like an action hero strolling from a burning building, European Cup over his shoulder as everything exploded behind him, a titan forged in the crucible of chaos, upsets, and people falling over. Thank you, Dado, for setting the tone.
Lionel Messi, Barcelona 4-1 Arsenal, 6 April 2010
There aren't really any words left to describe Lionel Messi, and this piece is plenty long enough anyway. So instead, a trivia question. Which Arsenal player scored a hat trick in the round before this one, as part of a 5-0 rout of Porto? Answer after the video ...
Come on down, Nicklas Bendtner!