Serhou Guirassy hasn’t even completed one season at Borussia Dortmund and he’s already re-written the history books.
Dortmund needed a massive game from their summer recruit to have any hope of erasing a four-goal deficit in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie against Barcelona.
And the Guinean international more than understood the assignment.
Guirassy initially provided a faint glimmer of hope in the 11th minute when he scored from the penalty spot.
Those hopes grew when he scored just four minutes into the second half to reduce the deficit to just two goals.
However, an own goal from Dortmund’s Ramy Bensebaini proved to be the sucker punch and left them needing to score at least five goals on the night to keep the tie alive.
Although Guirassy completed his hat-trick in the 76th minute to make it 5-3 on aggregate, Barcelona survived to progress to the semi-finals.
It was also a perfect hat-trick from Guirassy as he scored one goal with his left foot, one with his right and the other with his head.
He was unsurprisingly named the player of the match.
Despite Dortmund’s heartbreaking exit, Guirassy could take some solace in the fact he achieved a feat not even superstar strikers Erling Haaland and Robert Lewandowski could match during their time at the club.
By netting a hat-trick against Barcelona, it took Guirassy’s tally in this year’s Champions League to 13 from 14 games.
It left Lewandowski and Haaland in the dust, as their highest goal figure for Dortmund in a Champions League campaign was ten.
Lewandowski achieved the feat during the 2012/13 season while Haaland did so in the 2020/21 campaign.
That’s not the only slice of Champions League history Guirassy earned thanks to his scintillating hat-trick.
By netting 13 goals, it means the Guinean is now the record holder for the most goals scored by an African player in a single Champions League campaign.
He has now registered 15 Champions League goals in total having scored twice from four appearances during the 2020/21 season with Rennes.
It is the latest feat in what has been a dazzling debut season for Guirassy at Dortmund.
The 29-year-old moved to the club last summer from Stuttgart for an estimated £15.4million after he finished second in the Bundesliga golden boot charts to Harry Kane with an impressive haul of 28.
AFPDortmund will need Guirassy to bring his European form back to the Bundesliga[/caption]
Guirassy hasn’t quite matched his goalscoring feats from last season, netting 15 goals from 25 league fixtures.
However, it is emblematic of Dortmund’s malaise this campaign as they languish down in eighth place in the Bundesliga, six points off the Champions League places.
Dortmund will look to use the win over Barcelona in the second leg as a springboard for their remaining five Bundesliga matches, with the next clash coming against Borussia Monchengladbach on Sunday.
