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Football

22nd Oct 2020

Did you know? Axel Tuanzebe holds a world record for Hungry Hungry Hippos

Manchester United's Axel Tuanzebe already has an award for the season

Wayne Farry

Axel Tuanzebe

Easy to forget this one

Axel Tuanzebe has had quite the week so far, it is fair to say. The 22-year-old was thrown into the Manchester United first team for their match against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday – his first appearance since 2019.

He was assigned the task of keeping Kylian Mbappe, one of the world’s most lethal strikers, quiet. Amazingly, despite his lack of action recently, he did just that.

He followed Mbappe everywhere, and used his positional intelligence and strength to prevent the Frenchman from having more of an impact on the game, from which United emerged 2-1 winners.

Surely the greatest night of his career then, yes? Well, almost.

That’s because in 2018 Tuanzebe broke the world record for the fastest clearing of a Hungry Hungry Hippos board.

The record breaking came while United were on a pre-season tour of the United States, and Tuanzebe cleared the board in just 17.36 seconds to set the Guinness World Record.

He was then pictured alongside Guinness adjudicator Adam Brown, just to seal the authenticity.

“We have had a great day adjudicating a range of record attempts with the Manchester United Football team as part of their collaboration with Guinness World Records,” said Brown.

“Axel Tuanzebe, was the bigger winner of the day and bagged himself the record for Fastest time to clear a game of hungry hippos in a time of 17.36 seconds, beating competition from his fellow team mates.”

Proof, if ever it was needed, that footballers are not just one-trick ponies.