Shamrock Rovers’ Michael Noonan becomes second youngest UEFA competition scorer ever

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Many teenagers all across Europe got up and set off for school bright and early this morning. But not many of them did so having just scored in a UEFA competition the night before. That was the case for Shamrock Rovers forward Michael Noonan. At just 16 years and 197 days old, Noonan started Shamrock’s UEFA Conference League play-off against Norwegian side Molde, and made history as he slid in and turned home the ball to get the game’s winning goal in a 1-0 victory in Norway. In doing so he became the youngest ever goalscorer in the four-year-old Conference League, but more impressively the second youngest scorer in the history of all UEFA club competitions.

As illustrated on the graphic above, only Ghanian Nii Lamptey, who scored in the UEFA Cup for Anderlecht in the 1990/91 season can lay claim to being a younger goalscorer in UEFA competition than Noonan. Lamptey was just 16 years and 80 days old. Romelu Lukaku now moves down to third, having also scored for Anderlecht – this time in the Europa League in the 2009/10 season, aged 16 years and 218 days. The youngest ever scorer in UEFA’s current premiere competition, the Champions League, is Ansu Fati, aged 17 years and 40 days, but he only make it to 16th place on this overall list.

Remarkably, Noonan was actually making his debut for the club, having signed for Shamrock from St Patrick’s Athletic on a free transfer in January. Before that he had only even made five senior appearances for them. This Friday the youngster has been the most searched player on the Transfermarkt website, and will certainly be the talk of his school in Ireland this Valentines Day. If the youngster continues this trajectory, expect to keep hearing the name Michael Noonan.