A closer look at Harry Kane’s Champions League scoring spree
By Tom White, PA Sport Data Journalist
Harry Kane scored his second hat-trick in four days as he and Bayern Munich rewrote the Champions League record books in a 9-2 win over Dinamo Zagreb.
It was the most goals a team have scored in a single Champions League game while Kane became the competition’s top-scoring Englishman – here, we look at a historic night.
Wayne Rooney had been England’s leading goalscorer in the Champions League – including its predecessor the European Cup – with 30 goals in the main draw.
Kane went into the new season just one goal behind and the England captain, who last year broke his predecessor’s scoring record for the national team, needed just 19 minutes of his first outing in the new-look league stage to draw level with Rooney thanks to a penalty.
He was not finished there, scoring Bayern’s fourth goal in the 57th minute to settle their nerves – after two quickfire Dinamo goals had cut the deficit to 3-2 – and move past Rooney.
Two more penalties gave Kane four goals in the match and extended his new record to 33 in just 45 games, putting him in the top 25 of all European Cup goalscorers.
The record excludes the qualifying rounds, where Rooney scored an additional four goals for Manchester United to give him an overall total of 34.
Kane was one off the individual record of five goals in a Champions League match, shared by Lionel Messi, Adriano and Erling Haaland.
Kane also scored a hat-trick in Saturday’s 6-1 Bundesliga win over Holstein Kiel, making this the third time in his career he has scored seven goals in two games. He previously achieved that feat for Tottenham, with four against Leicester and three against Hull in May 2017, and England, with three against Albania and four against San Marino in November 2021.
No team had scored more than eight goals in a Champions League match before Tuesday night, meaning Bayern also broke new ground as a team.
Michael Olise scored twice with Raphael Guerreiro, Leroy Sane and Leon Goretzka also adding to Kane’s tally, while Bruno Petkovic and Takuya Ogiwara netted for Dinamo.
The record winning margin of 8-0 still stands, set by Liverpool against Besiktas in 2007 and equalled eight years later by Real Madrid against Malmo – a match in which Cristiano Ronaldo scored four times.
Borussia Dortmund’s 8-4 win over Legia Warsaw in 2016 remains the highest-scoring Champions League game with a total of 12 goals, with Bayern’s 9-2 win matching Monaco’s 8-3 thumping of Deportivo La Coruna in 2003. Bayern beat Barcelona 8-2 in the 2020 quarter-finals, played behind closed doors in Lisbon after a delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dinamo had seen one unwanted record taken off their hands in the 2022-23 competition when Rangers lost all six group games with a record goal difference of -20, one goal worse than the Croatian side in 2011-12, but are now once again associated with record-breaking Champions League futility.