Following this high-scoring record, it was a relentless evening of Champions League football on Tuesday. The evening turned out to be a blockbuster! 43 goals were scored, five red cards were shown, and six penalties were awarded, of which five were converted.
Last season’s winners, Paris St-Germain, hit seven past Leverkusen, with both teams having a player sent off and the German side’s Alejandro Grimaldo missing a penalty.
Similarly, PSV Eindhoven fought back from a goal down before running riot in a 6-2 win against Italian champions Napoli. Arsenal, Newcastle, and Manchester City all claimed convincing victories, with City’s Erling Haaland scoring for a 12th consecutive game.
Only twice before have there been more goals scored on a single Champions League night than in Tuesday’s goal-fest. Last season, in the final round of the league phase, a record 64 goals were scored. However, that was when all 18 games were played at the same time, so there was a lower goals-per-game average (3.55).
Back on 1 October 1997, there were 44 goals scored in 12 games. Paul Scholes and Zinedine Zidane were among the names on the scoresheet as Manchester United beat Juventus 3-2 at Old Trafford that evening. That was 11 years ago, when, on 21 October 2014, there were 40 goals in eight games (five goals per game).
Sergio Aguero and James Milner found the back of the net for Manchester City in a 2-2 draw against CSKA Moscow, long before the club got its hands on the Champions League trophy. Chelsea put six past Maribor on the same night, while Bayern Munich and Shakhtar Donetsk both scored seven times in respective wins over Roma and Belarusian side Bate Borisov.
