The forward of the Portuguese club Benfica, Vangelis Pavlidis, achieved a rather rare feat by scoring three goals against the Spanish team Barcelona (4:5) in the match of the 7th round of the main stage of the Champions League held the day before yesterday.
Before this match, only three footballers had managed to score a hat-trick against the Catalans in the history of the main European club tournament. The first to score three goals in a Champions League match against Barcelona was Colombian Faustino Asprilla. This happened in the 1997/98 season when his Newcastle beat the Spanish giant 3:2.
In the same season, the legendary forward of Kyiv's Dynamo, Andriy Shevchenko, also scored a hat-trick against Barca. Then the "white-blue" devastated the Catalans on their home turf with a score of 4:0.
Finally, the third player to manage to disappoint the "blue-reds" three times in a Champions League match was Frenchman Kylian Mbappé, who scored a hat-trick for PSG in a match against Barcelona (4:1) in the Round of 16 of the 2020/21 Champions League season.
