In FIFA.com's latest stats review, Cristiano Ronaldo's FIFA Ballon d'Or triumph features alongside Francesco Totti's derby records, Diego Alves's penalty-stopping brilliance and success stories forAustralia and Southampton.
500
top-flight wins and 150 first-tier victories away from home were the landmarks reached by Southampton on Sunday. The south-coast side achieved these milestones at one of their traditionally least favourite venues, triumphing at Old Trafford for the first time since January 1988 to end a 19-match winless streak. The Saints had taken just three points against Manchester United in those 19 games, but doubled that tally inside 90 minutes with a well-deserved 1-0 win. The Red Devils were kept comfortably at bay throughout, failing to register a single shot on target in a home English Premier League match for the first time since May 2009. Chelsea, meanwhile, are experiencing no such problems on their own patch. The Blues saw off Newcastle United 2-0 at Stamford Bridge on Saturday and, in doing so, became the first Premier League team since Blackburn Rovers in season 1994/95 to score twice or more in each of their opening ten home fixtures.
40
Rome derbies and 11 goals in the fixture were the record tallies reached by Francesco Totti on Sunday. The latter is a benchmark he shares with Dino Da Costa, a club legend from the 1950s, while the former belongs entirely to the current Giallorossi captain. Totti scored both Roma goals in this latest meeting with Lazio, a 2-2 draw, with his 45th Serie A brace helping maintain a record of never having lost a Derby della Capitale in which he has found the net. Nonetheless, Roma's failure to win left them having drawn their three most recent home league matches - their longest such winless run since September 2012. Lazio, for their part, are unbeaten in their last seven matches - a streak that stretches back to late November.
22
games and almost six years have passed since Australia were last beaten on home soil, this after they qualified for the AFC Asian Cup quarter-finals in impressive style. The tournament hosts, whose last loss came to Kuwait in March 2009, reached the last eight with a game to spare yesterday after following up a 4-1 win over the Kuwaitis by beating Oman 4-0. It was the first time that the Socceroos had scored four times in successive Asian Cup matches. Joining them in the quarter-finals are group rivals Korea Republic, who edged Kuwait 1-0 yesterday to maintain their record of having scored in each of their last eight matches at the AFC finals. Iraq are also well positioned, although their success has been indebted to strength at the other end of the pitch. After all, in seeing off Jordan 1-0 in their opening match, the 2007 champions racked up a seventh clean sheet in their last nine Asian Cup matches.
14
Spanish La Liga penalties have now been saved by Diego Alves, establishing the Valencia keeper as the division's most successful spot kick-stopper in the last 25 years. The Brazilian's latest save, in Saturday's 1-1 draw with Celta Vigo, took him past Santiago Canizares, who kept out 13. Andoni Zubizaretta holds the league's overall record with 16, but his were racked up over an extraordinarily long career - and the Barcelona legend boasts a much poorer save ratio. Zubizaretta, after all, saved 16 of 102 penalties faced (15.68 per cent), while Alves's rate stands at 42.43 per cent, with the Valencia No1 having prevailed on 14 occasions out of 33. That ratio rises yet further to 50 per cent if one considers the penalties that have missed the target or hit the woodwork and, taking into account all competitions, Alves has stopped 17 of the 37 spot kicks he has faced in Spanish football. Despite his latest heroics, however, he could not inspire another victory for Los Che. Indeed, the goal Alves conceded in his team's 1-1 draw was Celta's first in 726 minutes of top-flight action, ending their worst-ever run in La Liga.
5
players have now won the Ballon d'Or on three or more occasions after Cristiano Ronaldo swelled the ranks of this exclusive club on Monday. In adding to his two previous successes, the Real Madrid star joined Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini, Marco van Baster and the award's only four-time winner, Lionel Messi. No-one, however, has spread their Ballon d'Ors over such a long period, with Ronaldo's third arriving a record six years after he first picked up the award. The 29-year-old also became the first Real player to collect the coveted honour in successive years. Few questioned his status as a deserving winner, with the Portugal international rewarded for a year in which he scored 61 times for club and country and helped Los Merengues win four major trophies.
