Mauritania's Aboubakary Koita has joined an exceptional list of players who scored their country's first goal in UEFA Champions League history against Real Madrid. The AEK Athens man becomes the second Arab player to achieve the feat, after Egypt's Ahmed Hossam "Mido".
Koita struck for AEK Athens against Real Madrid on Wednesday evening, in the fourth round of the league phase of the continental tournament.
The 28-year-old netted the first Mauritanian goal in the history of the UEFA Champions League.
His strike added Mauritania to a list of six nationalities to have scored their first goal in the tournament's history against the Spanish side, according to statistics from the "Mister Chip" network.
Mido was the first Egyptian player to score in the Champions League, finding the net against Real Madrid in a Marseille shirt in 2003. That makes Koita the second Arab player to join the list, 23 years later.
Four other players beat the Arab pair to opening their country's goalscoring account in the competition against Real Madrid:
- Tajikistan: Cherevchenko, the Lokomotiv Moscow player, in 2001.
- Costa Rica: Centeno, the AEK Athens player, in 2002.
- Latvia: Verpakovskis, the Dynamo Kyiv player, in 2004.
- Luxembourg: Thill, the Sheriff Tiraspol player, in 2021.
There's a neat twist in the numbers, too. Two of the players behind these goals were linked to AEK Athens: Costa Rica's Centeno in 2002 and Mauritania's Koita in 2026.