Viktor Gyokeres joins exclusive three-man club with Lionel Messi with heroics against Man City
Viktor Gyokeres showed exactly what all the hype is about as she joined an exclusive club with his heroics against Manchester City.
The Sporting striker scored a stunning hat-trick in his side’s 4-1 Champions League win on Tuesday night.
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Gyokeres equalised seven minutes before half-time before completing his treble with a pair of penalties after the break.
In doing so, he became the first Sporting player to score a hat-trick in the competition for 42 years.
Antonio Oliveira was the last player to do so for the club back in 1982 against Croatian Dinamo Zagreb in the European Cup.
Gyokeres is also only the third player to score three goals against City in a single Champions League match.
He joins Lionel Messi and Christopher Nkunku in the exclusive club by taking home the match ball.
Messi found the net three times in a 4-0 win for Barcelona at the Camp Nou back in 2016.
The comfortable home win came during the group stage in Pep Guardiola’s first season as City boss.
Meanwhile, Chelsea striker Nkunku achieved the feat whilst playing for RB Leipzig in 2021.
Unlike Messi, though, he still ended up on the losing side in a 6-3 defeat at the Etihad Stadium.
Gyokeres continued his incredible scoring form this season in Lisbon, taking his tally to 23 in just 17 appearances.
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Rio Ferdinand was full of praise for the 26-year-old after the match as he called for his former club Manchester United to sign him with Sporting boss Ruben Amorim to take over as Red Devils manager following the international break.
Ferdinand told TNT Sports: “All of a sudden we’re seeing what he’s got now. He’s grown into what he is, confidence, the stature he has, the physicality. He might have had to wait for that to come.
“Today a few times on the halfway line, running through on goal, blowing players away, holding people off.
“It’s going to be interesting because like we spoke about before, managers when they leave clubs, there’s always one or two players where you think ‘I’ve got to take that, that guy knows how I play, that guy can feed off him’.
“Who is that guy going to be if he’s (Amorim) going to take someone from Sporting Lisbon? After the way this guy has been playing the last few weeks, 11 goals in five games he’s scored, is he going to be the number one target for the new manager at Man United?”
Gyokeres was brought to the Portuguese capital by Amorim last summer after firing Coventry to the Championship play-off final.
He has since scored 66 times in 67 appearances under the incoming United boss.
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Meanwhile, the Swedish international told reporters: “It’s always nice to score and even better to score a hat-trick. Most important was to win the game so it was a brilliant night for us.
“We knew it was going to be tough and we didn’t start off well. We knew they would give us space and we could have scored more than four to be fair. They could have scored more as well.
“You need to raise your level when you play better opponents. I tried to keep doing what I’ve been doing.”
Tuesday’s win over City takes Sporting to second in the league phase table, just two points behind leaders Liverpool ahead of Wednesday’s action.
