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The third matchday of the 2019-20 edition of the UEFA Champions League marked the midway point of the group stage campaign. Barring Galatasaray, every team has found the back of the net at least once, with Bayern Munich leading from the front with 13 goals.
Raheem Sterling and Kylian Mbappe scored three goals apice on matchday three and in doing so, the duo became the 94th and 95th different players in the competition to register a hat-trick.
151 goals have been scored so far this season, the most at this stage of a UCL campaign with the exception of the 2017/18 season, which saw 156 goals scored after three matchdays.
As goals came in thick and fast and the usual suspects all registered victories, here are the 5 key stats after the half-way point of the group-stage campaign.
#5 Napoli's Dries Mertens equals Diego Maradona's goal tally for the club
Dries Mertens drew level with Diego Maradona on the all-time topscorers chart for Napoli, as the Belgian attacker took his tally to 115 goals by virtue of his brace against Red Bull Salzburg.
With 3 goals in the Champions League so far, Mertens is level with the likes of Mauro Icardi, Son-Heung Min, Memphis Depay, Kylian Mbappe and Mohamed Salah others and the record-equalling Belgian will look to add to his tally in the coming weeks.
Only six other players have scored more goals in the Champions League than Mertens and the dimunuitive striker will look to break Maradona's record before the conclusion of Napoli's Champions League campaign this season.
Also check out: Champions League table La liga table 2019-20 Champions League Schedule
# 4: Robert Lewandowski moves to fourth on the list of all-time goalscorers in the Champions League
Robert Lewandowski is on a tear this season. With 12 goals, the prolific Pole is the runaway top-scorer in the Bundesliga and has scored 5 goals in the Champions League this season.
One of two players, the other being Norwegian teen Erling Braut Håland, to have scored in each of the 3 matchdays of the 2019-20 Champions League, Lewandowski moved to 58 goals in the competition with a brace against Olympiakos.
Only Cristiano Ronaldo (127), Lionel Messi (113), Raúl (72), and Karim Benzema (60) have scored more goals in the Champions League the Bayern Munich striker and he looks set to add to his tally in the coming weeks. The Polish striker's tally of 35 goals since the turn of the year is the most by any player across Europe's top-five leagues in that time.
#3 Erling Braut Håland's 6 goals after 3 games is the most by any player in the Champions League
Erling Braut Håland became the 9th player in history to score a Champions League hat-trick on his debut when he netted thrice in Salzburg's thumping 6-2 win over Genk on matchday one.
The three-goal haul also made the Norwegian teen the third youngest player in the competition to score a hat-trick. Only Raúl and Wayne Rooney were younger than Håland when they scored their respective first hat-tricks in the Champions League.
Håland's brace against Napoli took the young Norwegian atop the goal-scoring charts for the season. In the process,Håland became the quickest player to score 6 goals in the Champions League, doing so in just three games.
Cristiano Ronaldo, the Champions League's all-time top-scorer with 127 goals, took 27 games to open his account in the competition, and needed 32 games to score 6 Champions League goals.
Lionel Messi, the only other player in the Champions League to tally a century of goals and the second highest goal-scorer in the history of the competition, took 17 games to register 6 goals in Europe.
# 2: Kylian Mbappé breaks Lionel Messi's record to become the youngest player to score 15 goals in the Champions League
Kylian Mbappé became the 95th different player to score a Champions League hat-trick as the World-Cup winner came off the bench to play a starring role in Paris St. Germain's 5-0 victory away from home against Club Brugge.
At the age of 20 years and 306 days, Mbappe became the youngest player in Champions League history to score 15 goals in the competition, a record that was previously held by Lionel Messi.
#1 Lionel Messi becomes the first player to score in 15 successive Champions League season
Lionel Messi scored his first Champions League goal of the season by opening the scoring for Barcelona in a 2-1 away win at Slavia Praha on matchday three.
By virtue of his goal, Messi became the first player in Champions League history to score at least one goal in 15 consecutive seasons.
It was Messi's record-extending 67th group-stage goal in the Champions League. Alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, the Argentinian maestro holds the record for most hat-tricks in the history of the competition, with the duo netting 8 trebles apiece.
