Click here for our UEFA Champions League stats & facts homepage!
Since its beginning in the 1992/93 UEFA Champions League campaign, the format of Europe’s elite club competition has changed a couple of times. Whether it be a first group stage followed by a second or the now regular eight groups of four, it has always thrown up some very interesting statistics; some that are almost unbelievable.
For example, in the competition’s 30-year history, only three teams have failed to score a single goal in the group stage. Dinamo Zagreb were the most recent team to do that in the 2016/17 campaign, following Maccabi Haifa in the 2009/10 campaign and Deportivo La Coruna in 2004/05; just the season after the Galicians had been semi-finalists in the tournament.
Only four teams have managed to score over 20 goals in their six group stage matches with five others having scored exactly 20. The five others being Manchester United (98/99), Barcelona (11/12), Real Madrid (13/14), Barcelona again (16/17), Ajax (21/22) and Napoli this season.
Quite interestingly, the four teams to have managed to score over 20 goals have all done so in the last six and a half years. Borussia Dortmund became the first team to do so in 2016 with Bayern Munich being the only team to do so twice.
So, of the 11 times in which a team has managed to win every one of their six UEFA Champions League group stage matches, only two featured in the aforementioned top scorers list – both being Bayern Munich in the 2019/20 and the 2021/22 seasons.
It has been done by Spanish clubs on three occasions, twice by Real Madrid and once by Barcelona. German clubs have done it three times, too, but all three have been done by Bayern. Then one apiece for the Dutch Eredivisie (Ajax), English Premier League (Liverpool), French Ligue 1 (Paris Saint-Germain) Italian Serie A (Milan) and Russian Premier League (Spartak Moscow).