Almost a year after the last “hat-trick” he scored for his Liverpool side against his arch rival Manchester United, and 350 kilometers from the latter’s Old Trafford stadium towards Ibrox, the Scottish Rangers stronghold, Mohamed Salah scored a “hat-trick” that entered Champions League history as the fastest hat-trick in continental competition.
And Liverpool, second last season, beat Rangers 7-1 in Glasgow on Wednesday in the fourth round of Champions League Group A matches.
Salah made up for his underwhelming performance locally, after scoring two goals in eight games he has participated in since the start of the league, an unexpected rate for a player averaging 0.61 goals in the Premier League, as the captain. Egyptian only takes 7 minutes to visit the opponent’s goal, he enters as a substitute in the 68th minute and achieves his hat-trick in the 75th, 80th and 81st minutes, that is, in six minutes and 12 seconds, to set a new record in his name.
This “hat-trick” is Salah’s fifth for Liverpool in all competitions since his move from Roma to the start of the 2017-2018 season. The Scotsman on Wednesday night.
Salah surpassed the number of former Lyon striker Bafetimbi Gomez, who scored a “hat-trick” for the French team against Dinamo Zagreb in 8 minutes in 2011, as well as Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick with Real Madrid against Malmo Sweden, arrived in 11 minutes in 2015, the same number of minutes Robert Lewandowski needed when defending the colors of Bavarian club Bayern Munich to hit Salzburg with three goals this year.
German manager Klopp praised his player after his goals, saying: We all know what happens when things go well with Salah, he is exceptional, absolutely exceptional.
The Croatian Dejan Lovren, former colleague of Salah and current Russian Zenit player, defended him, after posting a tweet on his account via “Twitter” in which he stated: Keep it up, haters, only the opposite will happen.
And the famous statistical platform “Opta” has indicated that 112 “hat-tricks” have been scored in the Champions League since 2003-2004, Salah only needed 9 touches to score his hat-trick, which is the lowest number of hits that any player needed to score 3 goals from that year.
