Titles, titans and historic hat-tricks - Week in Numbers
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Champions and hat-trick heroes dominate FIFA.com's latest weekly stats review, with Sadio Mane and Domenico Berardi's trebles featuring alongside title celebrations in Australia, Portugal and Spain.
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national titles have now been won by Benfica after they crossed the finishing line on Sunday with a goalless draw at Vitoria Guimaraes. This latest championship strengthened the Lisbon giants' position as Portugal record champions - Porto follow with 27 - and means that only one other team on the European continent, 42-time Greek kings Olympiacos, have won more. It was, though, unusual in recent times for another reason, with Benfica successfully defending the title for the first time in 31 years. Jorge Jesus's newly crowned champions are currently unbeaten in seven, having lost just one of their last 16 matches.
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club trophies was the tally on to which Xavi climbed on Sunday, equalling the long-standing national record of Real Madrid legend Francisco Gento. The Barcelona icon, who is expected to announce his departure from the club this week, bolstered his impressive haul - which rises to 26 with international titles taken into account - with a club-record eighth La Liga title. Gento still sets the Spanish benchmark when it comes to league championships though, having won 12 during Real's golden era. Barcelona have emerged as impressive and worthy champions, and with three games remaining - including two cup finals - they have already won more matches (48) and racked up more clean sheets (33) than in any season in their history. They also have one of the game's all-time greats in Lionel Messi, whose title-clinching goal against Atletico Madrid on Sunday was his 54th in as many appearances this season.
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goals in three A-League Grand Finals have established Besart Berisha as something of a specialist when it comes to Australian football's showpiece match. The Albanian striker added to his tally in Melbourne Victory's 3-0 win over Sydney FC on Sunday and, having already lifted the trophy with Brisbane Roar last year, duly became the first player to win back-to-back A-League titles with different clubs. Better still for Berisha, his single-season scoring record of 21 remains in place after the goals suddenly dried up for Sydney's Marc Janko. The big Austrian has now gone five games without finding the net, having previously hit 13 in the space of seven matches to leave Berisha's benchmark in danger. Sunday's resounding triumph secured Victory's third A-League title, equalling Brisbane Roar's record haul, and saw manager Kevin Muscat become the first man to win a Grand Final as both player and coach.
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minutes and 56 seconds was the period within which Sadio Mane scored the fastest hat-trick in the history of England's top flight on Saturday. The Southampton forward's quick-fire treble was comfortably the quickest since the Premier League's 1992 inception, smashing the four-minute, 33-second record set by Robbie Fowler in 1994. Mane's hat-trick, which was completed by the 16th minute, was also the earliest ever seen in the Premier League, beating by five minutes Dwight Yorke's against Arsenal in 2001. The Senegal international also became just the third Saints player - after James Beattie and club legend Matthew Le Tissier - to score three times in a single Premier League match. His goals came in a thumping 6-1 win over Aston Villa in which team-mate Shane Long also scored twice and laid on two assists - the first player to do so in England's top flight since Luis Suarez in December 2013. Villa, meanwhile, conceded their 6000th top-flight goal in the defeat, becoming just the second team - after Everton - to reach that particular milestone.
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hat-tricks against AC Milan is a feat that, before Sunday, no-one in the history of Serie A had ever achieved. The record books were rewritten, though, by 20-year-old Domenico Berardi, whose treble - allied to four goals in the corresponding fixture last season - means he has now scored seven times in I Rossoneri's last two visits to Sassuolo. The on-loan Juventus striker also ended his club's run of 237 minutes without scoring at home and took his Serie A tally over the past two seasons to 30. For Milan, the 3-2 defeat was their third away loss in succession - the club's longest such run since 2010. The 18-times champions are also facing up to their worst season in the era of the 20-team top flight, having picked up a measly 46 points from their 36 fixtures thus far. Rubbing salt in Rossoneri wounds were the two red cards picked up in Sunday's reverse by Giacomo Bonaventura and Suso. Those left Milan topping one table - the disciplinary league - with 12 dismissals this season a record-high in Europe's top five leagues.