The most goals scored by a single player in a match

Goals make the football world spin round, and the modern age has treated fans to some phenomenal showings from incredible goalscorers.

However, a lot of goalscoring records which were set decades ago still stand strong to this day, even with the likes of Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland sniffing around.

Here are the records around the most goals scored in a single game by one player.

In top flight matches, the record is held jointly by Hacene Lalmas and Malika-e-Noor, who enjoyed success in Algeria and Pakistan. Lalmas netted 14 goals for OM Ruisseau during an 18-0 win over JS Birtouta in the 1962/63 season, while Noor scored the same amount in her side’s 25-0 thrashing of Margala.

The world record for most goals scored in a single international match is currently held by Archie Thompson, who scored 13 goals for Australia in their 31-0 victory over American Samoa during qualifying for the 2002 World Cup.

David Zdrilic also managed eight strikes of his own in that clash, while Con Boutsianis grabbed a hat trick alongside a smattering of braces from other Socceroos stars.

Five players have scored five goals in a single game during the Premier League era.

Andy Cole was the first to achieve the feat, rattling in five of Manchester United’s nine goals in their legendary thumping of Ipswich back in 1995.

Alan Shearer got in on the act four years later, leading Newcastle to an 8-0 rout of Sheffield Wednesday, but it took just over ten years for the next striker to bag their quintuple.

Jermain Defoe ran the show with five goals for Tottenham against Wigan in 2009 before Dimitar Berbatov smashed Blackburn for five of his own in November 2010.

Sergio Aguero is the most recent entry, tonking Newcastle almost single-handedly in a 6-1 win in 2015.

Five is the magic number again here in the Champions League, with two players sharing the record for most goals scored in a single game. Surprise, surprise; Lionel Messi is one of them.

The Argentine genius was at his brilliant best when Barcelona hosted Bayer Leverkusen in the second leg of their UCL last 16 tie.

The lesser-known Luiz Adriano is the only other player to score five goals in a single UCL game when his Shakhtar Donetsk side smashed BATE Borisov 7-0.

Athletic Club legend Aritz Aduriz is the record holder for most goals scored in a Europa League game, netting all five of his side’s goals in a 5-3 victory over Genk in 2016.

The record for most goals scored by a single player in a La Liga game is held jointly by legends of yesteryear Agustin Sauto Arana and Laszlo Kubala, who each scored five.

Arana hit the landmark first as his Athletic Club outfit smashed Barcelona 12-1 in 1931 before Kubala joined the party 21 years later, this time as Barça put Sporting Gijon to the sword with a 9-0 victory.

The record is also shared in Serie A, with Silvio Piola and Omar Sivori of Vercelli and Juventus respectively both notching six goals in a single game.

There have also been 11 players in Italy’s top flight who have netted five goals in one game, the most recent being Miroslav Klose’s in 2013 – the German’s strikes came in the space of 40 minutes.

Your heads probably immediately went to Robert Lewandowski and his ridiculous substitute appearance against Wolfsburg, when he came off the bench to net five goals in nine minutes.

However, that haul was one short of Dieter Muller’s Bundesliga record of six goals in one game, back when Koln beat Werder Bremen 7-2 in 1997.

Again we’re going back in time, this time to the 1930s, where remarkably the only two seven-goal hauls in the history of Ligue 1 were recorded within three years of one another.

Andre Abegglen got the ball rolling, contributing seven of Sochaux’s 12 goals against Valenciennes, and it was the same opposition who would feel the sting of Jean Nicolas three years later when he scored seven times in Rouen’s 9-1 victory.