Mbappé and Haaland Take Two Records Away From Messi in the Same Champions League Week

If you missed matchday two of the Champions League league phase, you might want to sit down for this one, because the numbers tell almost as much of the story as the games themselves did. Eighteen matches spread across two days, nail-biting comebacks, blowouts nobody saw coming, and on top of all that, two records that had belonged to Lionel Messi fell in the same week to Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland.

Let's start there. Mbappé played his 100th match in the competition and became the youngest player ever to reach that mark, at 27 years and 298 days, breaking the record previously held by Messi himself (28 years and 84 days). And he didn't stop at the symbolic number: he also scored his 72nd career Champions League goal, moving past Raul Gonzalez on the all-time list, and he did it with a stunner from 24.9 meters out, the longest-range goal of his entire European career. Since his debut in 2016-17, only four players (Messi, Salah and Neymar among them) have scored more goals from outside the box than he has.

With that kind of performance, PSG beat Manchester City 4-2 and became the first French club ever to score four or more goals away from home against an English team in the history of the competition. City, for its part, lived through a nightmare on home soil: it conceded three first-half goals at home for the first time since 2015, and gave up two or more goals in the first 15 minutes of a European match at its own stadium for only the second time in its history.

Haaland Catches Up to Messi, for a Day

The other man of the hour was Erling Haaland, who reached 60 goals in 60 Champions League matches, the best scoring record through a player's first 60 appearances in the history of the tournament. He also became the youngest player ever to hit that number, at 26 years and 85 days, just one day younger than Messi himself was when he got there. To top it off, with his 37th goal in just 41 appearances for City, he passed Sergio Aguero as the club's all-time leading scorer in the competition.

Perhaps the most eye-catching comeback of the matchday belonged to Real Madrid: down 3-1 to Roma, the team came back to win 4-3, becoming only the second side since 2010-11 to win in regulation after trailing by two or more goals past the 80th minute. It's also the fifth time the Madrid club has won a Champions League match after trailing by multiple goals, the most comebacks of that kind by any team in the history of the tournament. Debutant Carlos Espi already has three goals in just 38 minutes of playing time in the white shirt.

Other results left their mark too. Atletico Madrid beat Manchester United 2-0, with Pablo Barrios scoring after just 47 seconds, making him the first Spaniard to score within the first minute of a Champions League match. For United, which has managed just two wins in nine matches this season (its worst start since 1986-87), it was the fourth goal conceded inside the first minute of a match in the modern era of the competition.

Bayern Munich could only manage a 3-3 draw against Norway's Viking FK, who scored after 71 seconds and then equalized again in the 90th minute, something that hadn't happened to the Bavarian side since 2018. Inter Milan, meanwhile, fell to Club Brugge and has now lost four straight matches in the competition, its longest losing streak in Champions League history. The hero of that night, Nicolo Tresoldi, became the first player ever to score a hat trick for a Belgian club in the tournament's history.

Arsenal extended its league-phase winning streak to 14 matches, the second-longest in the recent history of the format, and put Lille away by scoring all three of its goals in just 7 minutes and 18 seconds. Bukayo Saka now has 19 goals in European competitions for the club, trailing only Thierry Henry (42). Barcelona, powered by a Lamine Yamal who already has nine assists in just ten matches this season, reached eight straight games scoring three or more goals across all competitions, though the club also stretched its run without a clean sheet in the Champions League to 17 matches, the longest such streak in its history.

There was room for some fun storylines too. Bradley Barcola scored his first professional hat trick and became the first Frenchman to do so for Liverpool, in a match against LASK that finished with nine combined goals. Aston Villa scored five goals, joining a select group of English clubs outside the "big six" to have done so in this competition. And there was a double celebration in South America: Luis Suarez reached seven goals for Sporting CP, a club record, while Venezuela's Gleiker Mendoza scored his second goal of the season for Shakhtar, matching Salomon Rondon as the only Venezuelans to score multiple goals in Champions League history.