West Ham set astonishing new European record with Freiburg result

West Ham United made a bit of history on Thursday with their Europa League win over Freiburg, extending their unbeaten run in UEFA competitions to 17 games.

After Lucas Paqueta’s early strike in Germany had been cancelled out, centre-back Nayef Aguerd scored the decisive goal that sealed the win and all three points for David Moyes’ team.

The Hammers had started their Europa League campaign with a win over Serbian minnows Backa Topola last week, having qualified for the continent’’ secondary club competition by virtue of winning last season’s Europa Conference League.

In Declan Rice’s final act before securing the club a £105m payday by joining Arsenal, he became the first West Ham captain since Bobby Moore in 1965 to lift a major European trophy.

West Ham are becoming used to playing in Europe and, frankly, they seem very good at it.

Their 17-game unbeaten run, which includes a Europa Conference League qualifying round last season to kick things off, is actually a record for English teams – no one, not even the great Liverpool or Manchester United teams of the past have put together such a streak. Even Manchester City’s current unbeaten stretch in Europe is only 15 games by comparison.

The previous record had stood since 1968 when Don Revie’s Leeds were 16 games unbeaten in European competition. It was also equalled by Tottenham in the early 1970s.

West Ham’s last defeat came almost 18 months ago when they were beaten by Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League semi-finals, actually losing both legs to the eventual champions. Of the 17 games since then, 15 of which were in last season’s Europa Conference League, the Hammers have won as many as 16 of them. The only game in that time they haven’t won was the first leg of the quarter-final against Belgin side Gent – they promptly won the return leg 4-1 at home.

However, West Ham face one of the toughest tests yet to keep their record going as they travel to Greece to face Olympiacos in their next Europa League group game on 26 October. The Greeks then return the favour by heading to London in early November, before further matches against Backa Topola and Freiburg leading to Christmas. Remaining unbeaten could see the record inflate to 21.

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