Klose Joins Drake, Negri And Salenko In The Five Goal Club

Miroslav Klose is a name found often in football’s record books. The second most capped German player of all time behind legend Lothar Matthaus, already holds the records for being the only player to have scored at four goals in three World Cups and also the only player to have ever played in five European and World Cup semi finals. At the weekend, Klose added yet another record to his collection when he scored five goals in one match for Lazio against Bologna, making him the first Lazio player to ever do so. Hitting a hat trick is hard enough but for a single player to hit five in one match is quite the achievement. Klose joins the likes of Falcao, Lionel Messi, Alan Shearer, Andy Cole, Jermaine Defoe, Daniel Fonseca, Dimitar Berbatov, Jurgen Klinsmann and Gerd Muller in the five goal club but there have been other less known names that have struck the same note.

Marco Negri

In 1997, then Rangers manager Walter Smith spent $3.5million on an unknown Italian striker called Marco Negri. Having hit 52 goals in 94 Serie A games, Smith hoped that Negri would have the same eye for goal for Rangers and he wouldn’t be disappointed. Negri hit 23 goals in his first ten games for his new club including a five goal brace against Dundee United, the best of which was a lob over the keeper from the edge of the penalty box. His form continued as he hit another nine in the next seventeen matches until he was strangely injured in a squash match with Italian counterpart and Rangers teammate Sergio Porrini. Hit with a ball in the eye, Negri was ruled out of action for a while and when he came back he struggled to get his form back. After contracting a flesh eating disease in his leg that ruled him out for the entire next season, Rangers sold Negri back to Italy where he finished up his career with a whimper.

Fernando Morientes

Before David Villa and Fernando Torres, Fernando Morientes was the go to Spanish striker of choice for most fantasy teams. The prolific former Real Madrid player scored 72 goals for Real Madrid in an eight year spell before a move to Liverpool dried him up and ruined his career. A brief spell back at Valencia looked to have rescued him but a final move to Marseille only confirmed what many had suspected that Fernando was finished. But during his heyday Morientes was a feared striker and proved it during a match in 2002 against Las Palmas by hitting five goals. He could have actually finished with a double hat trick after being given the chance in the dying minutes of the match from the penalty spot. However he would be denied and finished the match with the paltry five goals instead, cementing his place in the Spanish record books.

Oleg Salenko

Oleg Salenko gained a reputation as being quite lazy. Rightly or wrongly labeled, the former Valencia and Dynamo Kiev star did have one game when he seemed to step it up a gear. In that fateful game against Cameroon in the group stages of the USA 1994 World Cup, Salenko punished poor defending by hitting five past them. These five goals plus a single goal against Sweden in the opening game was enough to secure Salenko the golden boot, albeit shared with Bulgarian Hristo Stoichkov. Strangely, after the world cup Salenko would never score for his country again, concluding his international career after eight games played, six goals scored. He would finish his career in 2001, barely able to shake off the lazy tag as he went.

Kris Boyd

Scotland striker Kris Boyd is tone of only a few players to have ever scored five goals in a match twice but what is unique about Boyd is that he scored both of his hauls against the same team! The team for which this humiliation lay was Dundee United who failed to make Boyd properly on two occasions (once for Kilmarnock in 204 and then for Rangers in 2004) and paid the ultimate penalty. Shortly after Boyd achieved legend status at Rangers, he move to Middlesbourgh where his career went into nosedive, only to be resuscitated at Kilmarnock, following a brief spell in the US with Portland Timbers.

Ted Drake

Not the most well known of names but Drake is an Arsenal legend, having scored an incredible 124 goals in 167 games for the club, including a breathtaking seven, yes seven goals in one match against Aston Villa in 1935. Drake by all accounts was on fire that day and could have easily hit double figures if he hadn’t been so generous in setting up teammates to shoot and if the referee had allowed his eighth goal which hit the crossbar and crossed the line only for it to be ruled out. Drake was in the best form of his life when the Second World War began, effectively ending his career but he still goes down in history as the only player in the English leagues to have hit seven goals in a single match.

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