MILAN – Like an Olympic sprinter off the mark at the gunshot. The whistle blows, and he’s off in search of a goal. Lautaro Martínez’s season so far in Serie A has been marked by this supersonic trend, with eight of his eleven goals in the league scored in the first half an hour play. (Watch all of these goals at the bottom of this article)


Often the man to open the scoring, El Toro is full of freshness both in body and mind, and is always at the ready no matter how early in the game it is. Lautaro Martínez kicked off this trend of his against Cagliari, heading home to give Inter the lead in the 27th minute. He also netted a penalty in the 18th minute of our first game against Juventus. Less than two minutes had passed when he opened the scoring at the Mapei Stadium in our 4-3 win over Sassuolo. Then his deflected effort gave Inter the lead after 23 minutes of play against Brescia.

With the exception of the goal against Juventus, all of these fast goals from Lautaro have taken Inter into the lead. The same was true away to Torino where he scored after twelve minutes, or against SPAL after 16. It took him less than four minutes to find the net against Atalanta, while Lautaro also slotted home after 29 minutes against Cagliari.

Our No.10 also continued this trend in the Champions League: he scored after two minutes at Camp Nou, after 22 against Borussia Dortmund at San Siro, after five in the away game in Germany, and even after 19 away to Slavia Prague. These goals made it a streak of four consecutive games in which our Argentine had scored in the elite European competition. Before him, only three players had achieved the same feat for Inter: Samuel Eto’o in 2010, Christian Vieri in 2003 and Hernán Crespo in 2002. Along with this, with his goal against Slavia Prague, Lautaro Martínez became just the fifth Argentine in history to score in four consecutive Champions League games, after Hernan Crespo (2002), Lionel Messi (six times), Sergio Agüero (2019) and Ezequiel Lavezzi (2013).