Barcola had gone six games without a goal for Liverpool, and his first senior hat-trick beat LASK 6-3 in Linz
Araujo, Frimpong and Koumas also scored as Iraola’s side made it two wins from two in the Champions League, before a late LASK fightback.
Oct 15, 2026
Bradley Barcola had played six times for Liverpool without a goal or an assist. In Linz on Wednesday night he scored three, the first senior hat-trick of his career, as Andoni Iraola’s side beat LASK 6-3 to make it two wins from two in the Champions League league phase.
It was 5-1 when Barcola completed his hat-trick in the 66th minute. The last half-hour got messier than Iraola would have liked, with LASK scoring twice in the space of a few minutes to make the scoreline look closer than the game had been.
Three goals in 15 minutes
Liverpool went ahead in the 22nd minute when Ronald Araujo headed in a Kostas Tsimikas corner, his first goal for the club. Barcola doubled the lead 96 seconds later, finishing off a pass from Lewis Koumas, and got his second in the 37th minute after Florian Wirtz slid him in behind the LASK defence.
Liverpool had 19 shots in the first half, the most by an away team in the first half of a Champions League match on record. They went in 3-0 up, the first time they had led by three at half-time in a Champions League game since they were 3-0 up on Manchester City in April 2018.
Jeremie Frimpong headed a fourth early in the second half from another Tsimikas cross. Robert Ljubicic pulled one back for LASK on 63 minutes, but Barcola finished his hat-trick three minutes later. Koumas, who had two goals ruled out for offside, made it six in the 72nd minute when he tapped in Frimpong’s cross.
The late wobble
Florian Flecker then scored twice for LASK, the second in the 77th minute. Yvan Dibango set up all three of the Austrian side’s goals.
Iraola had changed both centre-backs around the hour, resting Araujo and Jeremie Jacquet with a Premier League game against Brentford coming. Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez came on, and all three LASK goals followed. Iraola took the blame himself afterwards. “It’s not the right thing to do as a manager to change both centre-backs together,” he said.
He was much happier with the rest. “I think offensively it has been a very complete game,” he said, and he picked out Barcola as “a threat always, one-v-one, threatening in behind.”
Barcola and Wirtz answer their critics
Barcola joined from Paris Saint-Germain in August, and his slow start had drawn plenty of criticism. Wirtz had been under fire too after Liverpool’s 3-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday, their first loss under Iraola. Both answered it in Austria.
Koumas had a record night of his own. At 21 years and 25 days, he became the youngest Liverpool player to score and assist in the same Champions League game, beating a record Steven Gerrard set against Dynamo Kyiv in 2001.
Nine goals also made it Liverpool’s highest-scoring European match since the 2001 UEFA Cup final, when they beat Alavés 5-4. LASK are still without a point after two games.