David Luiz endured a difficult return to Champions League football as he went off injured for Pafos FC.
The former Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain defender made a shock move to the Cypriot side during the summer transfer window.
Pafos made their competition debut on Wednesday night in a trip to Olympiacos that ended 0-0, with Luiz being named in the starting XI.
However, they went down to ten men in the 25th minute as Bruno Felipe picked up his second yellow card.
Just moments later, matters were made worse when Luiz was forced off the pitch with an injury.
Kostas Pileas replaced the 38-year-old, who earned his first start in the Champions League since 2017, with 34 minutes on the clock.
But Pafos held on to win a crucial point away from home and make an unbeaten start to their European campaign.
Luiz’s success in the Champions League
Following a January 2007 move from Vitoria to Benfica, Luiz made his debut in the Champions League later that year against AC Milan.
He featured a further seven times for the Portuguese side, but none of those outings came beyond the group stages.
Luiz joined Chelsea in early 2011 but didn’t feature in their European squad for the rest of the season.
However, the Brazilian was part of their first ever Champions League triumph as they beat Bayern Munich on penalties in the 2011/12 final.
The centre-back played the entirety of the match and scored his spot-kick in the shootout despite a hamstring injury in Munich.
An injury meant he had to go off injured before half-timeAFPSpeaking to the BBC, he said: “The final, I was not supposed to play because [of] my hamstring injury. Not many people know about that.
“I went to the pitch, I played 120 minutes, scored a penalty with a hamstring that I have, until today, a big gap.
“The scar, the mark, that I’ll never forget.”
Luiz played two more seasons of Champions League football with Chelsea, with the club reaching the 2013/14 semi-finals.
PSG signed him in a £50million move that summer, although they were knocked out of the quarter-finals in his two seasons in Paris.
Chelsea re-signed Luiz in 2016 and he made another four appearances in the Champions League in the 2017/18 campaign.
Luiz helped guide Chelsea to the first of their two Champions League titlesGettyHis outing for Pafos against Olympiacos has taken him to 55 matches in the competition across four clubs.
Should he recover in time, Luiz could face his former club Chelsea in the Champions League at Stamford Bridge on January 21.
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