UEFA Youth League group stage by numbers
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
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UEFA.com crunches the numbers from the group stage, where Benfica went goal crazy, all five Spanish sides progressed and Atlético's Roberto Nuñez became the competition's leading scorer.
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0: Points that separated Dinamo Zagreb, Arsenal and Olympiacos in Group F, the tightest of the UEFA Champions League path sections. Olympiacos were the unlucky party, missing out on the play-offs due to their inferior record in a three-way head-to-head between the teams.
2: UEFA Youth League defeats Benfica (24 games), Barcelona (23) and Chelsea (24) have suffered respectively since the competition's inaugural season, 2013/14.
3: Holders Chelsea and Barcelona, along with Benfica, finished the group stage unbeaten.
5: Five players managed three or more goals in a game:
Roberto Nuñez* (Astana 0-9 Atlético Madrid)
José Gomes (Galatasaray 1-11 Benfica)
Diogo Gonçalves** (Benfica 8-0 Astana, Galatasaray 1-11 Benfica)
Sadiq Umar (Roma 5-1 Leverkusen)
Cristian Cedrés (Shakhtar Donetsk 2-6 Real Madrid)
*Scored four
**Diogo Gonçalves in profile
5: All five of Spain's group stage entrants – Atlético, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Sevilla and Valencia – finished in the top two of their respective pools. Spain also achieved a qualification clean sweep in 2013/14, although this season Villarreal lost in the first round of the Domestic Champions path.
9: Atlético's Roberto Nuñez finished as the group stage's top scorer despite not adding to his nine-goal haul on matchday six. Astana were particularly accommodating opponents for the 19-year-old, who struck six times against the Kazakh debutants. The former Spanish Under-17 international has appeared in all three seasons of the UEFA Youth League and with 15 goals in 18 outings is the competition's most prolific player.
10: Ten players made one or more appearances in the 2015/16 UEFA Champions League group stage:
Filip Benković (Dinamo Zagreb 2-1 Arsenal, Bayern München 5-0 Dinamo)
Cameron Borthwick-Jackson (Wolfsburg 3-2 Manchester United)
Alex Iwobi (Bayern 5-1 Arsenal)
Jean-Kévin Augustin (Malmö 0-5 Paris)
Christopher Nkunku (Paris 2-0 Shakhtar Donetsk)
Edoardo Soleri (BATE Borisov 3-2 Roma)
Steven Bergwijn (PSV Eindhoven 2-1 CSKA Moskva)
Renato Sanches (Astana 2-2 Benfica, Benfica 1-2 Atlético)
Rafael Mir (Zenit 2-0 Valencia)
Franz Brorsson (Malmö 0-5 Paris)
29: Goals scored by Benfica in six Group C matches, a total swelled by an 11-1 matchday three defeat of Galatasaray.
-34: The final goal difference of Astana, who lost 8-0 to Benfica and 9-0 at home to Atlético.
315: The number of goals scored in the group stage, 42 down on last season.