Multiple Club and European Records Broken in 7-1 Rangers Win

Winning 7-1 is fun. Do you know what else is fun? Putting your name into the record books. Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah and Diogo Jota all did so, etching their names into both club and European record books with their exploits last night against Rangers.

Let’s start first with Bobby Firmino. The Brazilian is having one of his best seasons in front of goal in this very turgid Liverpool FC campaign and opened his account in Europe last night by adding two goals to his name. He now has 22 goals in Champions League competition for Liverpool, taking him past Steven Gerrard, who had 21. Gerrard now sits in fourth amongst Liverpool’s record Champions League top goalscorers.

Mohamed Salah began his Wednesday night on the bench but got down to business quickly after his introduction at the 68-minute mark, notching the first of his three goals after 75 minutes.

Six minutes and 12 seconds later, the Egyptian King had notched two more goals to complete his hat trick, the quickest in the Champions League era. Prior to this, that record belonged to Bafétimbi Gomis, who scored three in eight minutes for Lyon against Dinamo Zagreb in 2011.

The folks at Opta also pointed out that Mo only needed nine touches for his trio of goals. As noted on Reddit’s Soccer subreddit, the ball was only in play for 2 mins 36 seconds due to 4 substitutions taking place in between all the goals. The hat trick also took less time than the total time needed for Liverpool’s three comeback goals in the 2005 UEFA Champions League final against Milan, which took 6 minutes 20 seconds to complete.

The three goals took the Egyptian King’s goal tally to 38 for Liverpool in the Champions League, the highest total for an English club, moving past him past Wayne Rooney and Raheem Sterling.

Diogo Jota also somehow assisted on all of Salah’s goals, notching the fastest-ever hat-trick of assists in the competition, whilst also becoming the first Liverpool player to assist a hat-trick for a team-mate since 1995, when Stan Collymore did so for Robbie Fowler against Arsenal in December that year. This feat has not been accomplished in a decade, not since Franck Ribery did likewise for Mario Gomez in Bayern Munich colours against Basel in March 2012.