Foden had gone ten months without a City goal, and his hat-trick beat AEK in front of 20,000 empty seats
Phil Foden scored three and set up Rayan Cherki as Manchester City beat AEK Athens 5-1 in the Champions League. The club put the Etihad crowd at 40,042.
Oct 21, 2026
Phil Foden went ten months without a goal for Manchester City. He has now scored four in four days, and three of them came on Tuesday night in a 5-1 Champions League win over AEK Athens that a lot of City’s own supporters chose not to watch in person.
City put the attendance at 40,042, according to The Sun. The Etihad has been expanded to hold around 61,000, so more than 20,000 seats were empty for a home game in the Champions League. Six days earlier, more than 60,000 had come to see Paris Saint-Germain.
Anderson first, then Foden
Enzo Maresca changed his side heavily after Saturday’s league win over Ipswich. Erling Haaland, rested after an injury scare, started on the bench, and Floyd Samba led the line instead.
It took 12 minutes for City to score. Elliot Anderson scored after Enzo Fernández’s free kick had come back off the crossbar, his first goal for the club since his summer move. Foden made it 2-0 on 34 minutes from Rico Lewis’s pass.
AEK did get one back. Stavros Pilios scored seven minutes after the restart, the first goal City have ever conceded to a Greek side. It did not last long as a contest. On 57 minutes Foden laid the ball off to Rayan Cherki, who sold his marker a dummy and finished low into the bottom corner.
Foden then added two more. The first, on 65 minutes, went into the top corner, and he picked it out afterwards as his favourite of the three. The hat-trick goal came on 76 minutes.
Level with Lampard
The three goals take Foden to 23 in the Champions League proper, from 70 appearances. That moves him past Steven Gerrard’s 21 and level with Frank Lampard in fifth place among English players. Harry Kane (57), Wayne Rooney (30), Raheem Sterling (27) and Paul Scholes (24) are the only Englishmen ahead of him.
It is quite a turnaround for a player whose season looked to be going nowhere a month ago. Foden was sent off after 23 minutes of the Manchester derby at Old Trafford on 13 September for kicking out at Bruno Fernandes. His goal against Ipswich on Saturday was his first for City since December 2025.
“I enjoyed that a lot. The lads were great again. We showed determination again, it wasn’t pretty at times,” Foden told City’s website. “I’m going in the right direction.” He also said he had enjoyed his switch into a false nine role.
Maresca on Cherki
Cherki’s goal was his sixth in 11 appearances in all competitions this season, and Maresca was asked about the talk of him as a Ballon d’Or contender. He was happy to praise him without joining in. “We know we can expect anything from Rayan at any moment,” he said, before adding that “this is a team sport, not a single sport.”
Why the empty seats?
No reason has been given. It was their third home game in under a week, after PSG and Ipswich, and a league-phase visit from AEK was never going to sell like PSG did.
The timing still sticks out. City’s fans have been defiant since the club was found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, a ruling City are appealing. A home crowd of 40,042 does not fit that story. Whether it was the opponent, the fixture pile-up or something else, it made for an awkward picture on the night Foden finally looked like himself again.
The win lifts City to six points from three games after that 4-2 defeat by PSG. AEK have three. City’s next game is at Aston Villa in the Premier League on Saturday, with a 12:30pm kick-off in England, which is 5pm IST.