Lewandowski dazzles amid legends’ landmarks - THE WEEK IN NUMBERS
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In FIFA.com’s latest stats review, we reflect on a week to remember for Robert Lewandowski, Francesco Totti, Carli Lloyd and fans of Heracles, Zamalek and Borussia Dortmund.
300 Roma goals was the milestone reached by Francesco Totti on Sunday, establishing him as first player in the history of Italian football to reach this tally with just one club. Totti’s landmark strike, which came four months after his 299th and 21 years after his first, was also his 244th in Serie A, taking him to within 30 of Silvio Piola’s all-time league record. Also making history in Italy over the past week were Napoli, who won successive games by a five-goal margin for the first time. Brugge and Lazio were their victims, with Gonzalo Higuain scoring a double against Lazio to maintain his remarkable record of two goals-a-game - ten in five appearances - against the Romans.
100 successive home games without defeat was the awesome landmark reached in style by USA’s women on Sunday. The world champions' crushing 8-0 win over Haiti was the 88th victory of that remarkable streak, and was watched by a crowd of 35,753 in Birmingham, Alabama - a new record for a women’s international match in the south-east US. On the field, the principal American heroine was, once again, Carli Lloyd. The star of the team’s Canada 2015 triumph scored a hat-trick for the second match running, becoming just the third US player – after Mia Hamm in 1998 and Cindy Parlow in 2000 – to achieve this feat. Lloyd now has five international trebles to her name, a tally that only four countrywomen - Hamm, Parlow, Abby Wambach and Michelle Akers – have previously managed. Parlow, in fact, has now been surpassed by Lloyd in the team’s all-time standings, with the 33-year-old having raced on to 77 goals and sixth place. This is due largely to a record-breaking 2015, with the Houston Dash star having already found the net 16 times for USA, establishing this as the most prolific year of her international career.
51 years without an Eredivisie win over PSV was the run that came to a shock end for Heracles on Saturday. The Almelo outfit’s previous victory – a 1-0 success in 1964 - had until the weekend been their only top-flight win over the Eindhoven giants. Furthermore, they had never beaten them at home. But in what was a landmark match in any case – the club’s 500th in the Eredivisie – Heracles rewrote the record books by coming from behind to win 2-1, thrilling a buoyant crowd. This was the first time PSV had lost a league match from a winning position in over a year. It brought a sixth win in succession for their hosts though, and took John Stegeman's side – for 24 hours at least, before being leapfrogged Ajax - to the unfamiliar heights of top spot.
8 years and four months after their last victory in the Cairo derby, Zamalek finally returned to winning ways against Al Ahly on Monday. It was the White Knights’ first win over their old rivals in 22 matches, since 21 May 2007, and came in the Egyptian Cup final – a tournament in which they hadn’t beaten Ahly since 1959. With Zamalek having won their first title in 11 years just a few months ago, this latest triumph secured the club’s first domestic double since 1988. Basem Morsi was their hero, scoring both goals in a 2-0 win and, in the process, becoming the first Zamalek player to notch a derby double since Hazen Emam in 2002/03.
5 Robert Lewandowski goals in eight minutes and 59 seconds was the feat that stunned world football last night. Bayern Munich’s Polish striker came off the bench with his team 1-0 down to Wolfsburg only to single-handedly turn that deficit into a 5-1 lead between the 51st and 60th minutes. In the space of this remarkable burst, Lewandowski went from scoring from the fastest Bundesliga hat-trick - three minutes and 22 seconds – to setting new records for speedy four and five-goal hauls. The 27-year-old also became the first Bundesliga player in 24 years – since Duisburg’s Michael Tonnies managed it against a certain Oliver Kahn – to find the net five times in a single game, and is the first man to do so as a substitute. As the player himself said afterwards: “This is madness! I just simply took one shot after another without really thinking. I don't know how fast it was, but it was fast. After the fourth I looked at the scoreboard, it was the 60th minute and I only thought: 'Ooh!'”
5 wins, zero points dropped, 18 goals scored and three conceded have given Borussia Dortmund the best start by any team in the history of the Bundesliga. Thomas Tuchel's team have scored three or more in each of their last six top-flight matches, setting a new club record and racking up the third-best overall tally at this stage of a season behind Cologne (19 in 1977/78) and Borussia Monchengladbach (20 in 1973/74). Underpinning this impressive start has been the prolific form of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who has scored in each of the opening five rounds of matches. In the history of the Bundesliga, only five players had previously managed this, with Stefan Kiessling the most recent in 2009. League records are being rewritten at either end of the table at the moment, with this the first Bundesliga season in which two teams – Dortmund and Bayern Munich – have started with five straight wins (with Bayern adding a sixth last night), and the first in which two – Stuttgart and Monchengladbach – have arrived at this stage without a single point.