Article by Daniel Grigore – Published Tuesday, 21 October 2025, 20:34 / Updated Tuesday, 21 October 2025 20:37
The Cape Verdean Joao Correia, Pafos' striker, was eliminated in the 4th minute of the match the match with Kairat Almaty. It's the second fastest red card in Champions League history!
The match between Kairat and Pafos, in which the Romanian midfielder Vlad Dragomir started as the starter, started furiously.
It was 2 minutes and 44 seconds when Joao Correia, the attacker of the visitors, put his foot in the face of the opposing left back, Machado Mato.
Correia's elimination in Kairat – Pafos, the second fastest in the history of the Champions League!
It was an extremely harsh intervention, sanctioned as such by the “central” Chris Kavanagh, who showed him the red card 3 minutes and two seconds after the start.
It is, according to statistician MisterChip, the second fastest red card in Champions League history. Only Shakhtar's Oleksandr Kucher, in a match against Bayern Munich in 2015, was sent off faster, for a foul committed at minute 2 and 37 seconds.
Joao Correia has been playing in Pafos since the summer of 2024, when he was bought from Chaves for 200,000 euros. He played 4 times for the national team of Cape Verde, but in the last 2 years he was not called up at all, so he was not part of the group that wrote history, qualifying the island republic for the first time in the World Championship.
