Three Goals In Linz Put Barcola Among Liverpool Greats
Bradley Barcola’s start at Liverpool had been patchy, more promise than production. That changed in Linz. The French forward scored the first senior hat-trick of his club career, and he did it without fuss, three chances created or arriving, three finishes taken cleanly. Liverpool beat LASK comfortably with Barcola at the heart of almost everything they did well going forward, and in doing so he joined a short and significant list in the club’s history.
A Short List Of European Hat-Trick Scorers
Liverpool’s modern Champions League history was not always full of nights like this one. For a long stretch, a hat-trick in the competition was a genuine rarity for the club. Michael Owen was the first to manage it, scoring three against Spartak Moscow back in the 2002/03 group stage. Yossi Benayoun followed with a treble in an 8-0 demolition of Besiktas, and Philippe Coutinho then struck three times in a 7-0 win over Spartak in 2017.
Sadio Mane produced the only Liverpool knockout stage hat-trick the competition has seen for the club, scoring three in a 5-0 last 16 win over Porto at the Dragao in 2018. Diogo Jota then added his name in 2020 with three against Atalanta, a performance that hinted at exactly what he would go on to mean for this club. Mohamed Salah later joined the list in remarkable fashion, scoring the fastest hat-trick in Champions League history against Rangers in 2022, needing only six minutes and twelve seconds to complete it. Luis Diaz was the most recent before Barcola, with a treble against Bayer Leverkusen in 2024 that stands as one of the finest individual displays of his time at Anfield.
Barcola Becomes The Eighth Name On The List
Barcola is now the eighth Liverpool player to score a Champions League hat-trick, following Owen, Benayoun, Coutinho, Mane, Jota, Salah and Diaz. There is no need to overstate it beyond the facts. That is a genuinely select group, and getting into it in a competition this demanding says something about where Barcola’s season is heading.
Why This Hat-Trick Means More Than The Scoreline
The real value here is not just the statistic, it is the manner of the performance. Barcola arrived at Liverpool with reasonable questions hanging over him about adaptation, about output, about whether he could translate his talent into consistent numbers in a new league and a new system. Those are fair questions for any forward in his first season at a new club.
A night like this does not erase every doubt in one go, but it cuts through a lot of it very quickly. If Liverpool want to go deep in the Champions League this season, they need more than one reliable source of goals, and Barcola has just made as strong a case as possible for being exactly that. One big performance in Europe will not settle the conversation completely, but it moves it along fast.