On the 3rd of April, 2024 Phil Foden, enjoying a stunning season with Man City, registered a Premier League hat-trick in his club’s 4-1 win over Aston Villa. It was the young England star’s second triple of the season too, an impressive feat considering he is more of an attacking midfielder than anything else.
So, Foden has scored the top flight’s most recent hat-trick and, one for the fact fans, Eric Cantona scored the division’s first (we are referring to the Premier League era only here of course). Cantona notched three for Leeds United against Spurs in August 1992 (having also bagged a hat-trick just a few days earlier against Liverpool in the Charity Shield, as the Community Shield was called back then).
However, in between Cantona’s treble and Foden’s recent heroics, we have seen a lot of football in the Premier League and thousands of goals. And we’ve witnessed hundreds of hat-tricks too. But which players have netted the most trebles and how realistic is it to expect another Man City man, Erling Haaland, to set a new mark when it comes to Premier League hat-tricks?
Sergio Agüero Has Scored the Most Premier League Hat-Tricks
Foden has netted three hat-tricks, an impressive feat for an midfielder who is still only 23 years old! Haaland, as we shall see, has already recorded more and the Norwegian is a couple of months younger than his teammate!
But it is another Man City star who leads the way when it comes to Premier League hat-tricks and that man is Argentine ace Sergio Agüero. Agüero was born in 1988 in Buenos Aires and boasts 101 caps and 41 goals for his country. He also has a Premier League record 12 hat-tricks.
City signed him in 2011 from Atletico Madrid and he made an instant impact, registering 24 league goals in 34 PL matches in 2011/12. And of course, what an impact it was, as it was his goal in the 94th minute of the final game of that season that brought the club its first Premier League title.
He really hit the ground running in Manchester and brought up his first City hat-trick in his third league game for them. One of his more memorable trebles actually came in the Champions League, as he almost single-handedly beat Bayern Munich 3-2 in 2014. Another PL hat-trick in May the following year helped him to 26 in the league in the 2014/15 campaign as he won the PL Golden Boot.
2017/18 was especially impressive in terms of hat-tricks as the Argentina international recorded a hat-trick of them. That campaign saw him become the leading non-European goalscorer in Premier League history, City’s all-time top scorer and bag trebles against Watford, Chelsea and Leicester.
In August the following year he scored three more against Huddersfield to move to nine Premier League hat-tricks and into second place on the all-time list. High-class hat-tricks against Arsenal and Chelsea in 2019 put him joint top and then he notched his 12th and final, record-breaking hat-trick against Aston Villa. That came in a 6-1 win away from home on the 12th of January 2020.
All in all Agüero managed 184 PL goals for City, from just 275 games, with a total of 260 from 390 in all competitions. He lies fifth in terms of total Premier League goals, behind legends Alan Shearer, Harry Kane, Wayne Rooney and Andrew Cole, but as we have seen, tops them all when it comes to hat-tricks. But who else has reached double figures in terms of Premier League trebles?
Players with the Most Premier League Hat-Tricks
Only one other player has reached 10 or more top-flight trebles since the 1992/93 season. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that man is the competition’s record goal-getter, Alan Shearer. The Geordie legend was a superb all-round striker and had much in common with Agüero. For many years he held the record for the most PL hat-tricks with 11 and his true treble stats are better than they may appear as he also scored hat-tricks in the pre-Premier League era.
Indeed, Shearer’s first senior treble came back in 1988 when he scored three against Arsenal at the age of just 17 and 240 days. That made him the youngest player ever to record a hat-trick in the English top flight, a record that still stands to this day. He would register further top-flight trebles for Blackburn and then Newcastle. In fact, with Rovers, he banged in an incredible five in 1995/96 alone, a PL record. Those goals set him on his way to a career haul of 379, including 260 in the Premier League.
The list below shows all players with five or more Premier League hat-tricks, with all info correct as of the 3rd of April, 2024.
- 12 – Sergio Agüero
- 11 – Alan Shearer
- 9 – Robbie Fowler
- 8 – Harry Kane, Michael Owen, Thierry Henry
- 7 – Wayne Rooney
- 6 – Luis Suarez
- 5 – Robin van Persie, Raheem Sterling, Erling Haaland, Dimitar Berbatov, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ian Wright
Will Haaland Surpass Agüero?
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Haaland has made a freakishly good start to his Premier Leage career but one that was hardly unexpected given his stats at every single club he has played for. The Norwegian monster may be a League Two player according to some but he already has any number of records to his name. These include, for example, being the fastest player to 50 Premier League goals, and being both the youngest and fastest player to reach 30 goals in the Champions League.
He also has several Premier League records relating to hat-tricks, incredibly hitting three trebles in his first eight games, 40 games fewer than Ruud van Nistelrooy took to reach that many! So, with five Premier League hat-tricks already (that’s more than Les Ferdinand, Carlos Tevez, Romelu Lukaku, Mo Salah, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Didier Drogba and many other incredible strikers managed in their whole careers), can Haaland make it to 13 or more trebles in the English top flight?
He needs seven more to match Shearer and if he stays at City for a couple more seasons – his contract runs until the end of the 2026/27 campaign, so that seems likely – he has every chance. Whenever he doesn’t score for two games in a row, questions begin to be asked but the reality is that he remains the PL’s top scorer in 2023/24, despite missing a number of games through injury. He is a world class, truly generational talent and whilst nobody can see into the future, we predict Haaland will set a new PL benchmark for hat-tricks.