Lost in all the follow-up to Tottenham Hotspur’s 4-2 loss to Barcelona in the Champions League group stages was this little nugget: apparently Erik Lamela did a thing and wasn’t even aware of it until today.
It turns out that Lamela’s second half goal at Wembley that cut Barcelona’s lead to 3-2 was not only a great strike — it was also the 8,000th goal scored in the Premier League.
Oh, you didn’t know that? Neither did most people, because UEFA originally awarded it to Antoine Griezmann. Today, UEFA tweeted a follow-up message saying that, yep, they goofed and that goal should’ve been awarded to Coco. Just like Pochettino drew it up.
UEFA apologises for the erroneous statistic published last night regarding the scorer of the 8,000th UEFA Champions League goal. This occurred due to a database error. The correct scorer was Erik Lamela for Tottenham against Barcelona.
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) October 4, 2018
UEFA doesn’t say exactly what happened, but football.london tries to provide some clarity. Apparently the Atletico Madrid match kicked off a couple of minutes earlier than the Tottenham-Barcelona match. Griezmann scored his goal in the 67th minute of his match while Lamela scored in the 66th minute of the Spurs match. According to UEFA’s records, Griezmann’s goal came real-time chronologically before Lamela’s, but Opta says it’s the other way around. Real-time is supposed to be how that goal is awarded.
Nonetheless, UEFA decided to give it to Lamela for reasons I guess, and blamed it on a “database error.”
IDK, y’all. Thinking about it makes my head hurt. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have no idea what, if anything, Lamela gets for arbitrarily hitting that milestone. A fruit basket, maybe? He already got Lionel Messi’s shirt, so it kind of feels like he’s already won.