Chelsea set Conference League record with 8-0 win over Noah – but what are biggest-ever European scores and records? – Eurosport

Chelsea demolished FC Noah 8-0 to continue their perfect start to the UEFA Conference League and confirm their status as overwhelming favourites to lift the trophy.

Chelsea led by six at half-time and scored twice more in the second half to go top of the Conference League with a goal difference advantage of five over Legia Warsaw – though four other teams have three wins from three.

While the result is a Conference League record, it is far from the only demolition in the history UEFA competitions and even Chelsea themselves have put up bigger scores in European football.

Liverpool and Real Madrid are joint-holders of the biggest margin of victory in the Champions League.

The Reds put eight past Besiktas in 2007 and Malmo fell victim to Cristiano Ronaldo’s all-conquering Real Madrid in 2015.

HJK went two better in qualifying for the 2011-12 competition against Bangor City while the preliminary rounds of the European Cup featured eight double-digit wins headed by Dinamo Bucuresti’s 11-0 rout of Crusaders almost 50 years ago.

But those games were tight, edge-of-your-seat affairs compared to the overall UEFA records.

Chelsea’s own club record in Europe is a 13-0 demolition of Luxembourg’s Jeunesse Hautcharage in the 1971-72 Cup Winners’ Cup.

Peter Osgood hit five after also netting a first-half hat-trick in the first leg, and Thomas Baldwin would have had to fight him for the match ball with three of his own.

Alan Hudson, John Hollins, David Webb, Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris and Peter Houseman also filled their boots and this tie is also the biggest win over two legs at a mind-bending 21-0.

In the Europa League, the record is Ajax’s 14-0 thumping of Luxembourg’s Red Boys Differdange in 1984.

The biggest men’s European win was Sporting thrashing APOEL 16-1 in the first leg of their Cup Winners’ Cup tie in 1963.

The biggest victory in any senior UEFA club competition came in the Women’s Champions League in the form of Apollon Limassol’s 21-0 evisceration of Ada Velipoje.

Laura Rus scored five and eight different players got on the scoresheet, including two Ada own-goalscorers.

It was in the ‘qualifying round’ of the competition but was the only group stage in a format that then progressed to a knockout round of 32.

Enzo Maresca’s men have set the new high-water mark in the Conference League, and with a goal to spare too.

Nordsjaelland beat Ludogorets 7-1 in October 2023, just three weeks before Fiorentina matched that margin of victory against Serbian outfit Cukaricki, when five different players got on the scoresheet for the eventual losing finalists.

Chelsea’s romp is not the Conference League’s only eight-goal extravaganza. PSV and Copenhagen shared a 4-4 draw in the first leg of their 2022 round-of-16 clash as Cody Gakpo netted a brace.

And even more incredibly, PSV triumphed 4-0 in the return leg at Parken thanks to Mario Gotze, Noni Madueke and Eran Zahavi.

Zahavi was on the receiving end of the Conference League’s heaviest defeat in the knockout stages though, when Maccabi Tel Aviv lost 6-1 to Olympiacos after two goals in extra time, part of the Greek side’s run to lifting the trophy.

The biggest European win by an English side is Chelsea’s aforementioned 13-0 victory over Jeunesse Hautcharage of Luxembourg.

There is plenty of British representation near the top of the ‘biggest wins’ list too, thanks to Swansea’s 1982 12-0 win over Sliema Wanderers, Aberdeen pummeling KR Reykjavik 10-0 in 1968 and Northern Irish side Ards losing by the same margin to PSV seven years later.

It takes a lot to beat 13-0 and Chelsea are still chasing that dragon in all competitions. Their record domestic wins are three eight-goal triumphs including two in the Premier League against Wigan and Aston Villa in the space of only 31 months.

They have also recorded two 6-0 wins in the UEFA Champions League, both in the last decade against Qarabag and Maribor.