Pavlidis Comes Off the Bench to Score as Benfica Beat Celtic 4-1

By Taki Panos

Some nights a striker has to wait his turn. Vangelis Pavlidis started on the bench at the Estádio da Luz on Thursday, watched Benfica race into a 3-0 lead without him, came on in the 67th minute and still found time to get on the scoresheet. His late strike sealed a 4-1 win over Celtic on Matchday 2 of the Europa League league phase, as Record reported. Not bad for a cameo.

If you do not follow Portuguese football closely, Pavlidis is the Greece national team striker and one of the most reliable finishers in Europe right now. Born in Thessaloniki, he joined Benfica from AZ Alkmaar in July 2024 after finishing as joint top scorer in the Dutch Eredivisie, according to his Wikipedia profile. He is part of a busy week for Greeks abroad, after Kostas Tsimikas captained Liverpool and Konstantinos Mavropanos scored for West Ham.

Benfica did not need him early. Jhon Durán won a penalty in the opening minutes when Dane Murray kicked the back of his leg, and the Colombian dinked it down the middle, Panenka style, Sky Sports wrote. Alexander Bah added a second midway through the half from a Gianluca Prestianni pass, and Durán squeezed in a third from a tight angle about ten minutes before the break, per the AS match tracker. Celtic, to be fair, hit the woodwork twice in one attack at 2-0.

The visitors came out much sharper after halftime. Martin O'Neill sent on Haissem Hassan and Callum Osmand at the break, and just after the hour Hassan crossed for Camilo Durán to head in, The Irish News reported in its Press Association match report. Camilo Durán had joined the squad late after staying in Glasgow for the birth of his second child, which makes that goal a lovely little story of its own. He then hit the post again in the 72nd minute, per Sky Sports.

That was the stretch when Marco Silva turned to his bench. Pavlidis replaced Jhon Durán in the 67th minute, Gazzetta noted, and Andreas Schjelderup came on at the same time, according to the Daily Record. The game opened up as Celtic chased a second goal, and Benfica hit the frame of the goal twice more in the second half, through Schjelderup and Tomás Araújo, as Sky Sports listed. It was a rough night for the posts in Lisbon.

Then came the moment. In the 89th minute Araújo slipped a pass in behind for Pavlidis, who ran onto it and fired low from the edge of the box, Sky Sports reported. The Daily Record described a reverse finish through the legs of Celtic defender Auston Trusty, and Record wrote that goalkeeper Viljami Sinisalo seemed caught by surprise, standing still as the ball rolled in. A minute later Pavlidis delivered a cross from a corner and Araújo headed it against the bar, per AS. He nearly had an assist too.

The numbers around him are the bigger story. That goal was his 15th in 15 games for Benfica this season, both A Bola and the Daily Record pointed out. Fifteen in fifteen. In any league in Europe, that is the pace of a striker in the form of his life, and he added to it on a night when he only played about 25 minutes, which tells you plenty about Benfica's depth up front.

Jhon Durán, who scored his first brace in UEFA competition, spoke about the battle for a starting spot with real class. "Everyone knows Pavlidis is the first choice. He has earned everything, he has played more than me," the Colombian told Sport TV, as Record reported (translated from Portuguese). "I am just arriving here, and in the minutes I get to play, I will give my maximum for the team." That is a healthy rivalry, and Silva now has two strikers in form.

Silva was far happier with the first half than the second. "It was a totally deserved victory, with an excellent start to the game and an early goal, which always helps," he said, per A Bola (translated from Portuguese). He also warned against reading too much into the scoreline: "It looked easy, but there was nothing easy about it." Silva admitted the Celtic goal took some calm away from his side and named defensive duels and defending the box as things to fix.

There was a wider Greek flavor to the night as well. Olympiacos won 1-0 in Marseille and OFI lost 2-1 late at Rennes in the same competition, and the wins by Olympiacos and Panathinaikos lifted Greece to 10th in UEFA's country coefficient ranking, according to TA NEA. A Greek striker scoring for a Portuguese club does nothing for that ranking, of course, but it does nothing to hurt national pride either.

Pavlidis also has a habit of showing up on big European stages. He scored a hat-trick inside the first half hour against Barcelona in January 2025, in a wild 5-4 Champions League loss, as Benfica's own match report recalls. He also scored both goals when Greece beat England 2-1 at Wembley in October 2024, per England Football, the first time Greece had ever beaten England, as BBC Sport noted. Thursday's goal was a smaller moment, but it fits the pattern.

My take: this is exactly the kind of goal that keeps a striker's season rolling. He did not start, the game was already won, and he still made the run, took the chance and then set up another one within a minute. Fifteen goals in fifteen games is not luck. If he keeps this going through the autumn, Benfica have a very comfortable selection problem, and Greece fans have every reason to smile about the next international window.

Benfica's next Europa League trip has extra Greek flavor: they visit Omonia at the GSP Stadium in Nicosia on Thursday, October 22, at 22:00 Athens time, per SL Benfica. Pavlidis should hear plenty of Greek in the stands that night. In the league, Benfica travel to Santa Clara on Monday, October 26, according to the club's schedule. For more on Greek athletes around the world, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. Fifteen and counting.

Sources: Record, Gazzetta, Sky Sports, AS, Daily Record, The Irish News, A Bola, SL Benfica, TA NEA, England Football, BBC Sport.

Image: Vangelis Pavlidis with Benfica in 2026, by Ser!, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).