Serhou Guirassy and Alexis Claude-Maurice enter Bundesliga folklore with elusive hat-tricks
For many in the English-speaking footballing world, a hat-trick is quite simply a hat-trick. Yet in Germany, they like their trebles in varying styles, with the so-called 'lupenreiner Hattrick' ranking particularly high on the difficulty scale, and being all the more cherished for it.
There is something called the perfect hat-trick (left-foot, right-foot, header), but to boast of scoring a lupenreiner Hattrick, a player must net all three goals in the same half and without any other player scoring in between. On a very special Matchday 23 in the Bundesliga, we were treated to not just one, but two of these remarkable feats on the very same day.
At Borussia-Park, a certain Alexis Claude-Maurice was firing up his goalscoring engines as his Augsburg side sought to make hay against a Borussia Mönchengladbach team that had been reduced to ten men following the dismissal of goalkeeper Jonas Omlin in the 23rd minute of the teams’ encounter.
Having previously counted a couple of doubles among his six Bundesliga goals, the 26-year-old French attacker set about adding to his tally with strikes in the 55th, 61st and 70th minutes.
Opponents Gladbach were left stunned as the visitors extended their unbeaten run to seven Bundesliga games, while Claude-Maurice deservedly took the match ball as a souvenir of his incredible achievement.
“I’m really happy with the win and my three goals,” the former Lorient, Nice and Lens player said, in comments appearing on Augsburg’s official website. “It’s an honour for me to be the first Augsburg player to score a Bundesliga hat-trick in one half, but it wouldn’t have been possible without the rest of the team. We had more room to work with after the red card and we stayed patient, then we grabbed the decisive goals,” he added.
Fast forward to later that evening, and Borussia Dortmund were doing their best to bring Niko Kovač a first Bundesliga win at the helm of the Black and Yellows. By the time Guirassy struck BVB’s second goal of the night – and his first - in the opening half against Union Berlin, the points appeared destined to stay at the Signal Iduna Park.
As the rain fell and the second half progressed, the Guirassy show really began. The Guinea international netted in the 75th, 80th and 83rd minutes to complete his lupenreiner, all the while ensuring he bagged a four-goal haul against a well-beaten Union, who would concede again before the end in a 6-0 bruising.
Watch: Guirassy shines as BVB cruise against Union
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Not only that, but Guirassy's 'lupenreiner Hattrick' inside just eight second-half minutes was the seventh fastest ever recorded in the Bundesliga. Top of that particular list is a certain Robert Lewandowski, who netted three inside four minutes - as part of his five-in-nine spectacle - against Wolfsburg in September 2015.
“Serhou is something special; we have a top striker,” Pascal Groß told bundesliga.com after the final whistle, the Germany international also managing something special in his team’s triumph by laying on four assists.
“[Guirassy] deserves all the credit because the hardest thing is to put the ball away, even if that seems easy sometimes,” Groß added. “A lot of people try to do it, but you need to be there in the right spot, you need to make the runs and then need to be able to score the goals.”
Watch: Groß: "Serhou is something special"
Scoring goals is one thing, while netting hat-tricks is all the more spectacular. Yet bagging that oh-so-elusive lupenreiner is almost as prized as finding gold at the end of a rainbow.
To that end, take a bow Guirassy and Claude-Maurice, for providing us with a double footballing miracle on a special Saturday, and for enriching English-speaking Bundesliga fans with a new word for our footballing dictionaries.
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