In a commanding display on Tuesday evening, Algerian forward Houssem Aouar etched his name into the annals of Al-Ittihad club history. The star player delivered a stunning performance, netting three goals to propel the Saudi team to a resounding 7-0 victory over Qatari side Al-Gharafa in the penultimate round of the AFC Champions League group stage.
This emphatic win, secured in Jeddah, guarantees Al-Ittihad‘s progression to the knockout phases of the continental tournament, irrespective of the outcomes in the final matchday. Aouar’s decisive contributions were central to this achievement, with his goals arriving in the 20th, 58th, and 79th minutes of the encounter.
Beyond securing qualification, the match was historic for the player personally. With this remarkable hat-trick, Aouar has now scored a total of five goals in the current Champions League campaign, establishing himself as his team’s top scorer in the competition.
A Historic Feat for a Foreign Player
According to statistics provided by the sports data network Opta, Aouar’s triple has broken new ground. The analysis confirms that the Algerian international is the first foreign player ever to score a hat-trick for Al-Ittihad in an AFC Champions League match, across all iterations of the tournament’s naming history.
This accomplishment places him among a select group of club legends. Prior to Aouar, only three other players had managed this feat while wearing the Al-Ittihad jersey in Asia’s premier club competition: Marzouk Al-Otaibi in 2004, followed by Naif Hazazi and Mohammed Noor in 2009.
The data from Opta further underscores the magnitude of his individual performance. The network highlighted that Aouar is the first Al-Ittihad player to be directly involved in four goals in a single match since such detailed records began being tracked in 2013, underscoring a level of influence rarely seen in the modern era of the club’s continental campaigns.