Bradley Barcola becomes No.13 - Liverpool's European Cup hat-trick club
Bradley Barcola scored the 13th hat-trick in Liverpool’s European Cup history on Wednesday night.
The France international supplied three of the Reds’ goals as they defeated LASK 6-3 in Linz, on matchday two of the Champions League’s league phase.
A clinical, instinctive finish from Lewis Koumas’ tee-up began Barcola’s treble while also opening the summer signing’s account for the club.
His second strike was a cool dispatch from Florian Wirtz’s assist and goal three saw the No.29 tap in easily having been picked out by Jeremie Frimpong’s low cross.
Both the first and the second hat-tricks for Liverpool in the competition proper had come on the same October night in 1980.
Graeme Souness and Terry McDermott each achieved the feat as Oulu Palloseura were thrashed 10-1 at Anfield.
The former actually did it again later in the same campaign with three goals versus CSKA Sofia as the Reds went on to lift the trophy in 1981.
John Wark grabbed a treble against Lech Poznan in October 1984 and, three weeks and one round later, Ian Rush emulated him in a 3-1 win over Benfica.
Eighteen years passed until Michael Owen became the first Reds player to score a European Cup hat-trick away from home, at Spartak Moscow.
In November 2007, Yossi Benayoun found the net three times in an 8-0 home rout of Besiktas during the Champions League group stage.
There were two such cases during 2017-18 – Philippe Coutinho got a hat-trick against Spartak at Anfield and Sadio Mane repeated the trick on the road at FC Porto.
Diogo Jota starred with a trio of strikes when Liverpool triumphed 5-0 at Atalanta in November 2020.
Next, Mohamed Salah hit three goals in the space of six minutes and 12 seconds during a 7-1 success at Glasgow Rangers in October 2022.
Prior to Barcola’s showing at LASK, the most recent Reds treble on the European Cup stage was Luis Diaz’s tally against Bayer Leverkusen at Anfield in November 2024.
*Excluding qualifying matches
