It’s well documented that Al Duhail have won eight games in a row and are closing in on a tournament record, and that both Baghdad Bounedjah and Youssef El Arabi are the joint top scorers on nine goals.

However, with the competition eight games in, the-AFC.com dives deeper to look back at some of the other stats and facts that stand out after three months that has seen the number of teams reduced from 32 to just eight.

The two-time champions were in control for long spells of this encounter, always seeming to have more in the tank than the visitors from Thailand.

Mame Baba Thiam was the hero on the night; his treble of strikes eased Esteghlal past their Iran Pro League rivals, who could only find the back of the net once, after the damage had been done.

Prolific Thiam too hot to handle

Mame Thiam joined Esteghlal last February, penning a permanent deal with the Blues after terminating his Juventus contract with mutual consent. Until that point, he had been stuck in a perpetual cycle of short-term stints at European clubs, so Iran provided a fresh opportunity for the Senegalese forward to jump-start his career.

With eight teams having booked their tickets to the quarter-finals, the tournament now takes a three-month break, before which the-AFC.com looks back at the Round of 16 second leg clashes to highlight the week in numbers.

Kuala Lumpur: A match-winning hat-trick from Esteghlal’s Mame Thiam in the 2018 AFC Champions League Round of 16, second leg against Zobahan has seen the Senegalese striker named as the Toyota Player of the Week.

Esteghlal went into Tuesday’s game against their Islamic Republic of Iran rivals a goal down from the first leg but Thiam leveled proceedings with an early penalty, before curling in a fabulous effort from distance shortly before half-time.

Midway through the second half, the forward side-footed home his third in what was ultimately the contest’s deciding goal, his seventh of the campaign. Thiam got all four of his shots on target, posting a conversion rate of 75 percent, and scored a rating of 9.2.

Thiam’s goals have taken Esteghlal to a first quarter-final appearance since 2013 as he became only the fourth player this campaign to net three or more goals in a game, after Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors duo Adriano and Kim Shin-wook and Guangzhou Evergrande’s Ricardo Goulart.

Second in this week’s ranking is another player who shone in Tehran, Ahmad Nourollahi (pictured below), whose stunning strike opened the scoring in Persepolis’s 2-1 victory over Al Jazira on Monday.

Last year’s semi-finalists had to reverse a 3-2 defeat from the first leg and needed 89 minutes to do so after Ahmed Nourollahi’s opener was cancelled out by Romarinho. Skipper Seyed Jalal Hosseini delivered the all-important winner to the relief of the 80,000 fans in the stands.