Maybe Rangers should have put James Sands and Malik Tillman in?
Liverpool had a very rare sort of comeback win in the Champions League Wednesday, turning a 1-0 deficit into a 7-1 victory thanks in no small part to Mohamed Salah scoring a hat trick in all of six minutes and 12 seconds.
Rangers scored their first group stage goal in the 17th minute to take the lead at Ibrox, and though Roberto Firmino replied seven minutes later, the Scottish club — with both Sands and Tillman on the bench — got into halftime with the scores level.
Unfortunately for Rangers, the referees and Liverpool decided to play the second half rather than simply letting everyone go home early. Firmino struck again in the 55th minute, followed by a goal from Darwin Núñez, as Liverpool looked to be cruising to a win.
However, things were about to get worse for Rangers. Salah hadn’t even entered the game at that point, only entering the fray to replace Núñez after the Uruguayan had finished celebrating his goal.
With the clock reading 74:43, Salah took his first step towards a new Champions League record, stabbing a left-footed shot past Allan McGregor from an acute angle to make it 4-1.
The Egyptian star then added Liverpool’s fifth in the 80th minute, with a sneaky shot that used the scrambling Rangers defense as a screen. 96 seconds later, he had his hat trick, characteristically curling home from the right side of the box as the clock ticked over to 80:55.
Salah broke Bafétimbi Gomis’ 11-year-old record, as the French striker had scored an eight-minute hat trick for Lyon against Dinamo Zagreb back in 2011.
For Rangers, who ended up not putting Sands or Tillman into the match at all, it’s been a rough return to the Champions League. They are one of two teams to have lost all four of their matches, and Viktoria Plzen’s -13 goal difference in Group C is slightly better than the -15 mark Rangers has in Group A.
Watch Salah make Champions League history
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