On a daily basis new football records are been created by professional footballers and old ones broken, but there are some records that you would see or hear of and you become amazed as to how it is possible.
In this article I have presented 10 records that were created by 10 different professional footballers and teams all over the world. There is no order of arrangement but the last one will shock you.
10. Ryan Giggs
Giggs scored 107 premier league goals without a single hat-trick.
In his playing days Giggs was not a striker but a winger, he holds the record of scoring at least 1 goal in 21 consecutive Premier League seasons. He is now the Welsh football coach but as a player, he managed to score in each of his first 21 Premier League seasons and also has 107 league goals for Manchester United.
He scored a brace 10 different times in the Premier League for Manchester United but never scored a hat-trick. The only hat-trick he scored for United was in a friendly match but never in the league.
9. Kanu Nwankwo
Kanu won the African player of the year award twice, despite scoring zero goals over a span of 6 Africa Cup of Nations tournament.
This will come as a surprise to many bearing in mind how highly Nigerians regard Nwankwo Kanu.
The former Arsenal player despite winning the African best player awards in 1996 and 1999, wasn’t able to replicate the goal scoring form he showed at club level in the Super Eagles national team. He also played in 3 World Cup tournaments for the Super Eagles without scoring as well.
8. Eric Bailly
Eric Bailly took a 40 yard shot that went outside the Stadium.
Eric Bailly is a Manchester United player, this happened in October 2018 while playing a Champions League match against Valencia at Old trafford, under the then United manager Jose Mourinho. It was reported after the match that Eric Bailly’s attempted 40 yard shot went over and landed outside the Old Trafford stadium. What a shot!
7. Liverpool
Liverpool recorded 97 league points in the Premier League without winning the title.
In 2018/2019 Premier League season, Liverpool in 38 matches won 30, drew 7 and lost just once, giving them 97 points. This was not enough to secure them the title as Manchester City beat them to the league title by 1 point as they had 98.
In previous seasons this would have been enough to land them the title as it holds the record for the 3rd highest points reached by a team in the Premier League. Of course Man City’s 100 and 98 points in 2018 and 2019 respectively remains the highest.
6. Sadio Mane
Sadio Mane scored a Premier League hat-trick in 176 seconds.
Sadio Mane is currently a Liverpool player but this happened in 16th May 2015 when he was still at Southampton.
Southampton was playing against Aston Villa and in the 13th minute Mane scored his first goal and completed his hat-trick on the 16th minute. His record surpassed that of Robbie Fowler which was set in 1994 in a match against Arsenal, Fowler scored his hat-trick in 273 seconds.
5. Real Madrid
Real Madrid won 3 consecutive Champions League titles.
Every football fan knows how difficult it is to win the Champions League trophy, since it was renamed from European Cup to Champions League in 1992/1993 season, no team have won it twice in a row, even the Barcelona class of 2009 couldn’t repeat it in 2010.
It remained so until after Real Madrid won it in 2016, they changed history by winning it again in 2017 and 2018, making it three consecutive times they had won it before surrendering the title to Liverpool in 2019.
4. Frank Lampard
The only midfielder in the Premier League to score over 150 Premier League goals.
Frank Lampard played for West Ham, Chelsea and Manchester City during his playing days, the rate at which he scored goals season after season in the Premier League will be envied by some strikers for years to come.
At Chelsea he is their club record goal scorer with 211 goals, in the Premier League he scored a total of 177 goals in his time with the 3 clubs. Am sure you will be surprised to know he is in the top 5 of the list of Premier League highest goal scorers since it’s inception in 1992, and he is above Arsenal’s Thierry Henry in that list.
3. Robert Lewandowski
Lewandowski scored 5 goals in 9 minutes.
In September 2015, Lewandowski was brought in by Pep Guardiola after half-time as Bayern Munich were losing 0 – 1 to wolfsburg. In the 51st minute he equalised for Bayern then in the next 8 minutes 59 seconds he completed his 5 goal rout.
He broke some records in the process including, fastest Bundesliga hat-trick (3 minutes 22 seconds), fastest four goals in a Bundesliga match (5 minutes 42 seconds), fastest five goals scored in a Bundesliga match (8 minutes 59 seconds), most goals scored by a substitute in a Bundesliga match (5 goals). He received 4 world record awards and was entered in the Guinness book of records.
2. Lionel Messi
Messi scored 91 goals in one calendar year
In 2012 messI broke Muller’s record of scoring the highest number of goals in a calender year. He did this by scoring 91 goals that year, the goals were for both club and country. He scored 79 goals for Barcelona and 12 goals for Argentina. He went on to win his 4th consecutive Fifa Ballon d’Or award that same year, another record of it’s own.
1. Thomas Sweswe
Source: The Score Nigeria
Sweswe played the whole 90 minutes of a football match without kicking the ball for once.
In his playing days Thomas Sweswe played in the center-back position, he was born 9th August 1981 in Zimbabwe. He played for 9 different clubs as well as the National team. According to The Score Nigeria, in a Kaiser Chiefs game Thomas Sweswe played the entire 90 minutes and never touched the ball.
Personally I don’t see how this record can be broken.
As a fan of football which among these records do you think will be the hardest to break?
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Source: opera.com