10 eye-catching stats from the 2019-20 Champions League group stages
As the 2019-20 UEFA Champions League group-stage campaign concluded, most of the top European teams sealed their respective berths in the Round of 16. However, four former winners fell by the wayside as last season's semi-finalists Ajax, Inter Milan, Benfica, and Crvena Zvezda failed to negotiate the group stage of the competition.
This season's competition saw the most group-stage goals scored (308) since the second group stage was done away within 2003-04. Among six unbeaten teams in the group-stage, German champions Bayern Munich were the only team to win all their six games and score the most goals (24).
Ajax (10 points), and the trio of Internazionale, Benfica, and Zenit (7 points apiece) missed out on the Round of 16 while tournament debutants Atalanta's 7 points from 6 group-stage games were enough to take the Bergamo club to the knockout round of the Champions League in their first attempt.
Let us have a look at 10 of the most interesting stats from the six Matchdays of group-stage action in this season's competition.
1. Two debutants score Champions League hat-tricks on the same Matchday for the first time
Red Bull Salzburg striker Erling Haaland and Dinamo Zagreb midfielder Mislav Orsic became the first pair of Champions League debutants to score hat-tricks on the same matchday, when they netted three goals apiece against Genk and Atalanta respectively earlier this season.
It marked only the 8th and 9th instances of players making their debut in the competition with a hat-trick and the first since Yacine Brahimi did so for Porto against BATE Borisov in a 2014-15 group-stage fixture.
In the process, Haaland became the third Norwegian and Orsic the first Croatian player to net three or more goals in a Champions League game.
Also read: Meet the debutants to have scored Champions League hat-tricks