List of AFC Asian Cup hat-tricks

This is a list of hat-tricks in the AFC Asian Cup, that being when a player scores three or more goals in a tournament match of the AFC Asian Cup (not including qualification matches). Hat-tricks have occurred nineteen times across the eighteen editions.

The first tournament was held in 1956, however no hat-tricks were scored in the first four competitions. The first instance was in 1972, where Hossein Kalani scored three goals for Iran against Iraq in the group stage.^[1] Later on in the same tournament again for Iran, Ali Jabbari scored three goals inside nine minutes to defeat Thailand 3–2. The first time a player would score four goals in a match would be 1980, where Behtash Fariba achieved the feat in a 7–0 win for Iran over Bangladesh. After 1980, three tournaments went by without a hat-trick before Ali Daei scored four goals for Iran in a 6–2 win over South Korea in 1996, also marking the first time at least three goals were scored in a match in the knockout stage. Two tournaments later in 2004, another knockout stage hat-trick was achieved by Ali Karimi for Iran in a 4–3 win against South Korea, again in the quarter-finals. In the 2023 tournament, Akram Afif became the first player to register a hat-trick in the final of the competition, scoring all three of Qatar's goals in their 3–1 victory against Jordan; he was also the first player whose hat-trick consisted solely of penalty kicks.

Iran have scored the most hat-tricks with six, while Bangladesh and Uzbekistan have conceded the most, with three each. No player has ever scored multiple hat-tricks in the Asian Cup, and every hat-trick scorer has had their side go on to win their match.

Hat-tricks

No.	Tournament	Player	Time of goals	Representing	Result	Opponent	Round	Date	Ref.
1	1972	Hossein Kalani	34', 70', 78'	Iran	3–0	Iraq	Group stage	9 May 1972	[1][2]
2		Ali Jabbari	80', 86', 88'	Iran	3–2	Thailand		13 May 1972	[2]
3	1976	Gholam Hossein Mazloumi	63', 74', 80'	Iran	8–0	South Yemen	Group stage	8 June 1976	[3]
4	1980	Behtash Fariba4	11', 34', 80', 82'	Iran	7–0	Bangladesh	Group stage	22 September 1980	[4]
5		Choi Soon-ho	26', 53', 78' (pen.)	South Korea	4–1	United Arab Emirates		24 September 1980	[5]
6		Shen Xiangfu	1', 5', 72'	China	6–0	Bangladesh		25 September 1980
7		Xu Yonglai	16', 79', 89'
8	1996	Ali Daei4	66', 76', 83', 89' (pen.)	Iran	6–2	South Korea	Quarter-finals	16 December 1996	[6]
9	2000	Akinori Nishizawa	14', 25', 49'	Japan	8–1	Uzbekistan	Group stage	17 October 2000	[7]
10		Naohiro Takahara	18', 20', 57'
11		Lee Dong-gook	30', 76', 90+1'	South Korea	3–0	Indonesia		19 October 2000	[8]
12		Mohammad Al-Shalhoub	35', 78', 86'	Saudi Arabia	5–0	Uzbekistan		20 October 2000	[9]
13	2004	Ali Karimi	10', 20', 77'	Iran	4–3	South Korea	Quarter-finals	31 July 2004	[10]
14	2011	Ismail Abdullatif4	16', 19', 35', 77'	Bahrain	5–2	India	Group stage	14 January 2011	[11]
15		Shinji Okazaki	8', 13', 80'	Japan	5–0	Saudi Arabia		17 January 2011	[12]
16	2015	Hamza Al-Dardour4	35', 45+2', 75', 80'	Jordan	5–1	Palestine	Group stage	16 January 2015	[13]
17	2019	Almoez Ali4	9', 11', 55', 60'	Qatar	6–0	North Korea	Group stage	13 January 2019	[14]
18		Vitalij Lux	24', 51', 77'	Kyrgyzstan	3–1	Philippines		16 January 2019	[15]
19	2023	Akram Afif	22' (pen.), 73' (pen.), 90+5' (pen.)	Qatar	3–1	Jordan	Final	10 February 2024	[16]

By nation

Nation	Hat-tricks
Iran	6
Japan	3
South Korea	2
China	2
Qatar	2
Jordan	1
Saudi Arabia	1
Bahrain	1
Kyrgyzstan	1

References