Cristiano Ronaldo is arguably one of the best players in the world, but in recent times Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski has been compared to the Portuguese International on several occasions, especially. During the summer, Lewandowski took the attention from Ronaldo in the European Championship qualifiers after scoring one of the fastest hat-trick seen in the competition.
Ronaldo and Lewandowski played for their country on the same day, while Ronaldo was the pegged to make the headlines the following day after saving Portugal by scoring his season’s ninth hat trick, the Polish international’s last minute brace saw him score a him steal the show.
In the match against Wolfsburg, Lewandowski let his rapid goalscoring feet loose after he scored five goals for his team. By doing so he has joined the elite list of players who have scored five goals in a single game.
The striker stepped off the bench for Bayern at halftime and ended up saving them after sending the ball past the keeper five times in nine minutes.
Lewandowski’s five-goal haul the fastest ever
Ronaldo, who had accomplished the task of scoring five goals in a match before, did it again after sending five past Espanyol’s goalkeeper, helping Los Blancos thrash the Catalonian team 6-0. The Portuguese broke his 500 minutes goal drought in the La Liga and inched closer to beating Raul Gonzalez’s record for most goals scored for the capital club.
One of the main difference in the methods with which the two players accomplished the task was that Lewandowski scored all five of his goals from direct play, where as Ronaldo added to his tally by scoring from the spot.
Lewandowski broke several World and Bundesliga records after his goal scoring. For one he set a new record for the fastest Bundesliga hat-trick after scoring his first three goals withing the time span of four minutes, apart from that he was the only Bundesliga player to do so after coming in as a substitute.
While previous Bayern players like Gerd Muller and Dieter Hoeness have accomplished this task, his record made him the fastest player in the world to net five goals in a match.
One of the most memorable moments for the Poland international before this, was scoring four goals against Real Madrid and knocking them out of the Champions League semi-final in 2012/13 season.
Current players who are part of the elite group are Radamel Falcao and Lionel Messi who had a five-goal haul against Deportivo La Coruna and Bayer Leverkusen respectively.