3 footballers who played the most matches before scoring a Champions League hat-trick

Since the erstwhile European Cup rebranded itself as the UEFA Champions League from the 1992-93 season onwards, a total of 98 different players, hailing from 36 different countries, have scored a hat-trick in the competition for 49 different clubs.

Slovenian striker Josip Ilicic became the latest player to do so when he scored all four goals in Atalanta's 4-3 Round of 16 second-leg win at Valencia, which made the Serie A club the eighth team in the Champions League era to reach the quarter-finals on their competition debut.

Ilicic is the first footballer from Slovenia and the first Atalanta player to score a Champions League hat-trick. The duo of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi (eight apiece) lead a group of 20 players to have scored multiple hat-tricks in European club football's blue riband competition.

While 10 players, the latest being Mislav Orsic (Dinamo Zagreb) and Erling Haaland (Salzburg), scored a hat-trick on their Champions League debut, nine players took at least 50 games to score their first hat-trick in the competition. On that note, let us meet the trio who took the longest to bag their first Champions League hat-trick.

# 3 Fernando Morientes (76 games)

After playing 58 Champions League games for Real Madrid across seven seasons, and a further 17 games for Monaco (12) and Liverpool (5), Fernando Morientes marked his European debut for Valencia with his first and only hat-trick in the competition.

The then-30-year-old much-travelled striker restored parity for Valencia in a group-stage game at Olympiacos in 2006-07 before his second of the game gave the visitors a 2-1 half-time lead.

Following Nery Castillo's equaliser for the hosts midway through the second half, Raul Albiol scored for the visitors five minutes from time before Morientes applied the finishing touches by completing his hat-trick in the 90th minute.

Morientes would score only three more times in 17 further games in the competition before playing his final Champions League game for Olympique Marseille against his former club Real Madrid in the 2009-10 group-stages.

# 2 Cristiano Ronaldo (82 games)

Ronaldo takes the match ball after scoring his first Champions League hat-trick in 2012.

It might come as a surprise that Cristiano Ronaldo, the most prolific scorer in the history of the Champions League, took as many as 82 games to score his first hat-trick in the competition.

The first player to score 100 Champions League goals, 100 Champions League goals for a club, and the only one to feature in 100 Champions League match wins, took 27 games to break his duck in the competition when he scored a brace in Manchester United's 7-1 win over AS Roma in the 2006-07 quarter-final second leg.

Following six seasons with Manchester United and three further campaigns with Real Madrid without a Champions League hat-trick, Ronaldo scored his first three-goal haul in the competition in a 4-1 win at Ajax in a group-stage game in 2012-13.

At that time, it made the Portuguese international the player to take the most games to score his first Champions League hat-trick.

# 1 Zlatan Ibrahimovic (98 games)

Ronaldo's record of taking the most games to score his first Champions League hat-trick lasted for a year before Zlatan Ibrahimovich bagged his first Champions League hat-trick in his 98th game in the competition.

The tall Swede celebrated the occasion with a quadruple for Paris Saint-Germain in a group-stage game at Anderlecht in 2013-14. It would be the only time the former Juventus, Inter Milan and Barcelona striker would score a hat-trick in the Champions League.

The 6' 5" striker is one of the tallest players ever to score three or more goals in a Champions League game.

Edited by Samya Majumdar