Which teams have secured the biggest Champions League wins in the history of the competition? We list all occasions that a team has won a match by a margin of at least seven goals since the rebranded European competition kicked off in 1992.
The Biggest Champions League Wins
8-Goal Margin
Liverpool 8-0 Beşiktaş – 6 November 2007
Real Madrid 8-0 Malmö FF – 8 December 2015
7-Goal Margin
Juventus 7-0 Olympiakos – 10 December 2003
Arsenal 7-0 Slavia Prague – 23 October 2007
MSK Zilina 0-7 Marseille – 3 November 2010
Valencia CF 7-0 KRC Genk – 23 November 2011
Bayern Munich 7-0 Basel – 13 March 2012
BATE Borisov 0-7 Shakhtar Donetsk – 21 October 2014
Bayern Munich 7-0 Shakhtar Donetsk – 11 March 2015
Barcelona 7-0 Celtic – 13 September 2016
Maribor 0-7 Liverpool – 17 October 2017
Liverpool 7-0 Spartak Moscow – 6 December 2017
Manchester City 7-0 FC Schalke – 12 March 2019
Manchester City 7-0 RB Leipzig – 14 March 2023
Liverpool 8-0 Beşiktaş – 6 November 2007
Liverpool became the first team in UEFA Champions League history to score eight goals as they put Turkish side Beşiktaş to the sword at Anfield in November 2007. Alongside Real Madrid’s victory over Malmö eight years later, this remains one of the two biggest Champions League wins.
Two Peter Crouch goals bookended another six for the Reds, with Yossi Benayoun netting three of Liverpool’s eight goals in this win, becoming the first and so far, only Israeli player to score a treble in Europe’s top club competition.
With six of Liverpool’s eight goals coming after half-time, they became the first team to score as many as six goals in the second half of a Champions League match – a feat that has only been replicated once since, in Lyon’s 7-1 demolition of Dinamo Zagreb in 2011.
Real Madrid 8-0 Malmö FF – 8 December 2015
Rafael Benitez was in charge of Liverpool’s 8-0 win against Beşiktaş in 2007, and he did it again when in charge of Real Madrid eight years later. There are two outright biggest Champions League wins in history and the Spanish coach is responsible for orchestrating both of them. Not bad for a supposedly defensive manager.
Cristiano Ronaldo (four) and Karim Benzema (three) scored seven of Real Madrid’s goals, with this being the only game in UCL history to see two different players score a hat-trick. Ronaldo’s strikes took him to a Champions League record tally of 11 in the group stage alone that season and helped him finish on 16 goals in 2015-16, a total only eclipsed by his own effort in 2013-14 (17). His record tally of group stage goals nearly went in 2021-22 to Sébastien Haller when he was still at Ajax, but the now Borussia Dortmund man fell one goal short (10) of Ronaldo’s tally (11) from 2015-16.
For Malmö, this result followed a 4-0 defeat to Shakhtar Donetsk and a 5-0 loss to Paris Saint-Germain. Overall, they ended up conceding 21 goals in 2015-16 – the fifth-highest tally by a team in a Champions League group stage campaign.
Real Madrid eventually went on to win the Champions League final in 2015-16 thanks to a penalty shootout victory over Atlético Madrid in Cardiff.
Juventus 7-0 Olympiakos – 10 December 2003
Juventus thrashed Greek side Olympiakos 7-0 at Stadio delle Alpi in the 2003-04 Champions League group stage, with six different players helping themselves to goals on the night for the side from Italy.
Over half of the goals that Olympiakos conceded in the competition that season (54%) arrived in this single match, but it meant little for the Serie A club in the end as they were knocked out in the next round with a last 16 defeat to Deportivo La Coruña over two legs (2-0).
Arsenal 7-0 Slavia Prague – 23 October 2007
This game saw an English side score seven goals in a Champions League match for the second time, following Manchester United’s 7-1 win over Roma in the 2006-07 quarter-finals.
Theo Walcott scored twice – his first two goals in the Champions League, and he remains the youngest English player to score a brace in the competition at 18 years, 221 days old. Only Jude Bellingham, Jadon Sancho (both for Borussia Dortmund) and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain have netted a goal while younger than Walcott in the UCL of all Englishmen.
This match was the final victory in a sequence of 12 successive wins for Arsenal in all competitions (which included a Premier League win over rivals Tottenham), but what a way to end it.
MSK Zilina 0-7 Marseille – 3 November 2010
Marseille became the first team to score seven goals away from home in a Champions League match in November 2010, as they hammered Slovakian side MŠK Žilina. They remain the only French club to score seven times in a single game in the competition.
André-Pierre Gignac scored a hat-trick for Marseille, becoming just the fourth Frenchman at the time to net three in a Champions League match after Sylvain Wiltord, Thierry Henry and Franck Sauzée – the latter also doing so for OM.
MŠK Žilina lost all six of their games in the competition that season, with a goal difference of -16. This defeat certainly didn’t help. No Slovak side has appeared in the Champions League since.
Valencia CF 7-0 KRC Genk – 23 November 2011
KRC Genk opened up their 2011-12 UEFA Champions League campaign with a solid 0-0 draw at home to Valencia, but suffered a disastrous defeat in the return match just two months later.
La Liga side Valencia put seven past the Belgian club without reply, with three of those coming in the first half via Roberto Soldado. The Spanish striker scored a hat-trick within 39 minutes, which at the time was the fourth earliest hat-trick scored in the competition’s history.
Despite this victory, Valencia still exited at the group stage of the competition in 2011-12, finishing behind Bayer Leverkusen and Chelsea. Scoring only five goals in their other five games certainly didn’t help.
Bayern Munich 7-0 Basel – 13 March 2012
Bayern Munich followed up a 7-1 victory over Hoffenheim in the German Bundesliga with another seven-goal hammering just three days earlier. Mario Gomez scored three in that league win but went one better in this Champions League fixture and became the first German player to score four goals in a single match in the history of the competition.
This was the first time that a team had scored as many as seven goals in a knockout stage game of the Champions League and was the second leg of a tie that Basel were leading 1-0 following a meeting in Switzerland.
Bayern went on to reach the final that season but lost on penalties to Chelsea in their home stadium.
BATE Borisov 0-7 Shakhtar Donetsk – 21 October 2014
This game was over by half-time, with Ukrainian champions Shakhtar Donetsk leading 6-0 at the break and becoming the first and so far, only, team in Champions League history to score six goals in the opening 45 minutes of a game. Luiz Adriano helped himself to four of these and added his fifth and Shakhtar’s seventh in the second half, with the Brazilian becoming just the second player to score five times in a single UCL match after Lionel Messi.
BATE Borisov navigated their way past three qualifying rounds to reach the Champions League proper, but it was a pretty miserable group stage for the Belarusian side. The seven goals in this game contributed towards a total of 24 conceded by BATE in 2014-15 – no team has ever conceded more in a Champions League group campaign.
Bayern Munich 7-0 Shakhtar Donetsk – 11 March 2015
It would be a pretty impressive feat to both score seven goals and concede seven goals within two separate games in the same Champions League season, but Shakhtar Donetsk did just that as they got a taste of their own medicine in Munich.
After sealing one of the biggest Champions League wins against BATE Borisov in the groups (7-0), the Ukrainians suffered a defeat by the same score against Bayern Munich in the last 16. After drawing 0-0 in the first leg, Bayern were on fire in the second leg with six different players getting on the scoresheet.
Olexandr Kucher received the quickest red card in competition history for a third-minute foul, which then saw Thomas Müller net the resulting penalty. Bayern hit 25 shots with 13 on target in this win and eventually progressed past Porto in the quarter-finals before losing in the semi-finals to Pep Guardiola’s former side Barcelona.
Barcelona 7-0 Celtic – 13 September 2016
Barcelona put on a show in front of their own fans at the Camp Nou in this group stage meeting with Celtic in September 2016. Lionel Messi scored three of the seven goals on this evening – his sixth of eight Champions League trebles with his seventh coming just a month later against Manchester City.
Messi opened the scoring in the third minute, but Celtic had a chance to equalise in the 24th minute via a Moussa Dembele penalty, but it was saved by Marc-André ter Stegen on a miserable night in Spain for the Scottish side.
One of the major reasons for this win was the exceptional performance of Neymar. He scored once and assisted four more in this single match, with his five goal involvements being more than any other player in a Champions League game in 2016-17.
Maribor 0-7 Liverpool – 17 October 2017
Liverpool’s 7-0 away win against Slovenia side Maribor was the biggest win away from home by an English team in the history of the Champions League or European Cup. This was also the biggest away win by an English club away from home in a Europe competition since Arsenal defeated Standard Liege 7-0 in the Cup Winners’ Cup in November 1993.
Both Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah scored braces for the Premier League side, with Liverpool becoming just the fifth team to score as many as seven goals in a single Champions League away game.
Liverpool 7-0 Spartak Moscow – 6 December 2017
Liverpool enjoyed another 7-0 win in the 2017-18 Champions League group stage, less than two months after the same result away in Slovenia. These two results helped the Reds score 23 goals in the groups that season, the third-highest tally in a single UCL season.
Of the 13 biggest Champions League wins by a margin of at least seven goals, Liverpool are responsible for three of them.
Philippe Coutinho scored a hat-trick in this victory, which ensured qualification to the knockout stages for Jürgen Klopp’s side. This 7-0 loss meant that Spartak Moscow had to make do with Europa League football post-Christmas in 2017-18.
Liverpool went all the way to the Champions League final but finished as runners-up after losing 3-1 to Real Madrid in Kyiv, remembered mainly for Gareth Bale’s wonderful overhead kick and that Loris Karius error.
Manchester City 7-0 FC Schalke – 12 March 2019
Schalke 04? Schalke 07, more like. The German side were completely outclassed in the second leg of this last 16 tie in the 2018-19 edition of the competition, after previously losing the first leg 3-2 at home. City won 10-2 on aggregate to qualify for the quarter finals. Only once before had a team won by a larger margin in the Champions League knockout stages: Bayern Munich 12-1 Sporting CP in the 2008-09 last 16.
One of the goals on this night came from Phil Foden, who bagged his first goal in the competition and in doing so, became City’s youngest scorer in the competition (18y, 288d) while Leroy Sané grabbed a goal and three assists.
Manchester City 7-0 RB Leipzig – 14 March 2023
Nearly four years to the day of their 7-0 rout of Schalke, Manchester City fancied inflicting another thrashing on a Bundesliga club. RB Leipzig were the unlucky recipients, this time.
Erling Haaland scored five of Man City’s goals in the game, and it could have been more had Pep Guardiola not taken the striker off after 63 minutes. He scored his five goals from eight shots, with all of those being on target.
It was Haaland’s fifth of six hat-tricks that season in all competitions and took his seasonal goal tally to a quite ridiculous 39 in 36 games. In reaching 39, he broke the Manchester City club record for goals in a single season, overtaking Tommy Johnson’s 38-goal effort from 1928-29. He ended the 2022-23 campaign with 52 goals in 53 games overall.
German international Ilkay Gündogan and Kevin De Bruyne added goals for City to take their tally to seven and complete an utterly miserable night for RB Leipzig.
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