UEFA have issued an apology on social media after wrongly awarding the 8,000th Champions League goal to Antoine Griezmann at the expense of Tottenham Hospur star Erik Lamela.
Last night, the European football governing body originally awarded the French World Cup winner the milestone.
According to the official account of the tournament, Griezmann’s 67th minute goal for Atletico Madrid was deemed to have set the record. However, Opta said it was the 66th minute effort from Erik Lamela during Spurs’ 4-2 defeat to Barcelona.
UEFA reputed the stat provider’s claims and said on their official site: “To avoid confusion with varied kick-off times, goals are recorded based on the time of night (i.e. chronologically) rather than how long has elapsed in a game.”
Erik Lamela scores Spurs’ second goal
News outlets and spectators concluded that because Atletico’s clash kicked off a few minutes earlier than Spurs’, this meant that Griezmann’s strike won out against Lamela’s goal.
But today they have corrected themselves by stating that it was indeed Spurs man who scored the 8,000th goal. The reason is still unclear, but UEFA have blamed a “database error” for their incorrect statistic.
They tweeted: “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.”
And quite predictably, some football fans couldn’t help but poke fun at the north London club following the record set by the Argentine winger.
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