Online Reporter
THERE were 43 goals scored, five red cards handed out and six penalties awarded — of which five were converted.
It was a relentless evening of Champions League football on Tuesday.
Last season’s winners Paris St-Germain hit seven past Leverkusen, with both teams having a player sent off and the German side’s Alejandro Grimaldo missing a spot-kick.
PSV Eindhoven fought back from a goal down before running riot in a 6-2 win against Italian champions Napoli. Arsenal, Newcastle and Manchester City all claimed convincing victories, with City’s Erling Haaland scoring for a 12th consecutive game.
There were goals and drama aplenty, so BBC Sport has dived into the stats behind an entertaining night in Europe’s most prestigious club tournament. Only twice before have there been more goals scored on a single Champions League night than in Tuesday’s goal-fest.
Last season, in the final round of the league phase, there were a record 64 goals.
However, that was when all 18 games were played at the same time, so there was a lower goals-per-game average (3.55). Back on October 1 1997, there were 44 goals scored in 12 games. Paul Scholes and Zinedine Zidane were among the names on the score-sheet as Manchester United beat Juventus 3-2 at Old Trafford that evening.
If we look at statistics from the perspective of a goal-per-games average across multiple games, Tuesday night has been bettered only by one other Champions League evening.
That was 11 years ago when, on October 21 2014, there were 40 goals in eight games (five goals per game). Sergio Aguero and James Milner found the back of the net for Manchester City in a 2-2 draw against CSKA Moscow — long before the club got their hands on the Champions League trophy. Chelsea put six past Maribor on the same night, while Bayern Munich and Shakhtar Donetsk both scored seven times in respective wins over Roma and Belarusian side Bate Borisov. — BBC Sport.
