In FIFA.com’s latest weekly stats review, records for Cristiano Ronaldo and Mike Grella rub shoulders with a Daniele De Rossi milestone, a Dirk Kuyt hat-trick and a 50-game unbeaten run.
500 Roma appearances was the landmark reached by Daniele de Rossi on Saturday, 5100 days on from his Giallorossi debut. The long-serving midfielder, who became just the second player after team-mate Francesco Totti to reach this particular milestone, marked the occasion in style with his 52nd Roma goal and first in Serie A since March. De Rossi’s contribution helped the capital club to a third successive league win, their best run since November 2014, and he topped up his tally with another double last night as Roma shared eight goals with Bayer Leverkusen in the joint highest-scoring draw in UEFA Champions League history. There was another landmark in Italy over the weekend, with Torino coach Giampiero Ventura overseeing his 1000th professional game from the dugout. Unlike De Rossi, though, he could not celebrate with a win as I Granata were held to a 1-1 home draw by Milan, stretching to 14 years I Rossoneri’s unbeaten run in this fixture.
324 Real Madrid goals is the haul that has established Cristiano Ronaldo as Real Madrid’s all-time leading marksman. The Portuguese surpassed Raul’s erstwhile record in Saturday’s 3-0 win over Levante, and did so in just his 310th appearance for the club. To put that achievement in context, Raul scored his 323 goals over 741 games. History was also made by Keylor Navas, who became the first keeper in Madrid’s history to start a season without conceding in his first five home matches. Elsewhere in Spain, Neymar found the net four times in Barcelona’s 5-2 win over Rayo Vallecano, becoming the first Brazilian to achieve this in La Liga since Julio Baptista 11 years ago. He is also just the fourth Barca player to do so this century, following in the footsteps of Patrick Kluivert, Samuel Eto’o and, of course, Lionel Messi. It was, though, the fifth four-goal showing for a player who has already managed this feat twice apiece for Santos and Brazil’s national team.
50 consecutive matches unbeaten is the remarkable streak Dinamo Zagreb have strung together in the Croatian top flight. The serial champions have not tasted defeat in the league in over 17 months, since losing 2-1 at Istra last May when the title was already secured. It is the longest unbeaten run across the world’s top tiers, with Dinamo’s closest challengers in this respect Al Hilal of Sudan (44 matches) and Gabon’s Mangsport (40). The capital club, who are currently chasing an 11th successive championship, did however recently surrender a similarly impressive sequence in all competitions. That came to an end after 45 without loss, when they were beaten 5-0 by a rampant Bayern Munich, denting Champions League hopes that suffered another blow last night with a 1-0 loss to Olympiacos.
7 seconds were on the clock at the Red Bull Arena on Sunday when Mike Grella scored the fastest goal in Major League Soccer history. The New York Red Bulls forward pounced on an error at kick-off to eclipse one of the club’s former players, Tim Cahill, whose effort against Houston Dynamo in 2013 clocked in at eight seconds. Grella’s record-breaking strike set his team on the road to a convincing 4-1 win over the Philadelphia Union, leaving them tied with FC Dallas in the Supporters’ Shield race with just one game to play.
5 years and seven months after he last scored a hat-trick, Dirk Kuyt claimed the match ball once again – and surpassed a legend in the process. By firing in a 39-minute treble Feyenoord’s 5-2 win over Heerenveen, the 35-year-old moved on to 129 Eredivisie goals, eclipsing the final tally of Marco van Basten. It was Kuyt’s sixth hat-trick for Feyenoord, meaning that only two players in the club’s history - Cor van der Gijp (11) and Ove Kindvall (10) – now have more. It was, though, the first of his second spell, with his previous treble having come in a memorable 3-1 victory for Liverpool over Manchester United in March 2011.