Gordon’s first-half blitz rewrites Champions League Records | OneFootball

Anthony Gordon produced a night he - and Newcastle United - will never forget as his four first-half goals powered the Magpies to a stunning Champions League 6-1 victory over Qarabag in Azerbaijan.

The England international was simply unstoppable before the break, becoming just the second player in Champions League history to score four goals in the first half of a match. The only man to have done it previously was Luiz Adriano for Shakhtar Donetsk against BATE Borisov in October 2014 - and the Brazilian went on to score five that night.

Gordon, however, couldn’t add to his tally after the restart and narrowly missed out on joining an even more exclusive club. In the modern Champions League era (since 1992), only three players have scored five goals in a single game: Luiz Adriano, Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland. Gordon came within touching distance of matching that remarkable feat.

His four-goal haul also places him among elite English company. He is now the fifth English player to score four times in a Champions League fixture, following Dennis Viollet, Ray Crawford, Alan Smith and Harry Kane. Crawford remains the only Englishman to score five in Europe’s top competition, netting five for Ipswich Town in the old European Cup.

Gordon’s tally this season now stands at 10 goals, making him the second-highest scoring Englishman in a single Champions League campaign, just one behind Kane’s 11 for Bayern Munich in 2024/25. He also sits second in this season’s overall scoring charts, three behind Kylian Mbappé.

The team achievement was just as historic. Newcastle’s 6-1 win marked only the fifth time an English side has scored six goals away from home in the Champions League era. Even more remarkably, it was just the third occasion since 1992/93 that a team has scored five goals in the first half of a Champions League match - with Shakhtar and Bayern Munich the only others to manage it, both in 2014/15.

It was a record-breaking night all round - and one that firmly places Gordon’s name in Champions League history.