Hajduk squandered a two-goal advantage in Limassol: Pafos won 4:0 after extra time and knocked the Split club out of the Europa League
On 30 July 2026, Hajduk suffered a painful European defeat that wiped out the advantage secured in the first leg. The team from Split lost 4:0 to Pafos after extra time in the second leg of the Europa League second qualifying round and failed to advance to the next stage, despite arriving in Cyprus with a 2:0 lead. In Limassol, Pafos overturned the deficit through goals from Guga and David Goldar in normal time, before completing the comeback in extra time through Gabriel Teixeira, known as Biel, and João Correia. With a 4:2 aggregate victory, the Cypriot club secured a place in the Europa League third qualifying round, while Hajduk drops into the Conference League qualifiers. There, it will face Lithuanian side Žalgiris, a team that produced its own major comeback against Dinamo Tbilisi on the same day.
The second-leg result is particularly painful for Hajduk because of the way the match unfolded. The Split side was on the verge of advancing after maintaining its aggregate lead until second-half stoppage time, but Goldar's headed goal levelled the tie and sent the match into an additional 30 minutes. Pafos then moved ahead on aggregate for the first time as early as the 93rd minute, completely shifting the psychological and tactical balance in favour of the hosts. Hajduk tried to find a goal in the closing stages that would have forced a penalty shootout, but Correia made the final score 4:0 in the 117th minute. The defeat therefore erased the very good work completed a week earlier at Poljud Stadium.
The advantage from Poljud disappeared under constant Pafos pressure
In the first match, played in Split on 23 July, Hajduk won 2:0 through goals from Michele Šego and Dario Melnjak. According to the Split club's official report and UEFA data, Šego scored from a free kick in the 56th minute, while Melnjak converted Mathieu Acapandié's low cross eight minutes later. That result gave Hajduk plenty of room to manage the second leg: it could even lose by one goal and still advance. Before travelling to Cyprus, coach Gonzalo Garcia announced that his team would not focus exclusively on defending, but would instead try to control the match and look for another goal. On the pitch, however, the opposite scenario unfolded, as Pafos took the initiative from the start, while Hajduk defended deeply for most of the match and struggled to retain possession.
Pafos played its European home matches at Alphamega Stadium in Limassol rather than in its home city because the stadium in Pafos does not meet the required criteria for such fixtures, Hajduk stated before the match. At the stadium, which has a capacity of around 10,800 spectators, the hosts began aggressively, aware that they had to score at least two goals to force extra time. From the opening stages, the Cypriot team dominated possession, pressed Hajduk's back line high up the pitch and frequently returned the ball into the penalty area following partially cleared crosses. During those periods, Hajduk found it difficult to escape the pressure, and its attacks generally ended before reaching the final third. That balance of play allowed Pafos to gradually increase its number of attempts and keep the visitors' defence in an almost constant state of alert.
Guga created the first serious danger in the 22nd minute, firing a half-volley wide after a loose ball. A few minutes later, Bruno registered the first shot on target, but goalkeeper Toni Silić intervened confidently. Pafos took the lead in the 40th minute. Following another situation in which Hajduk failed to clear the danger completely, the ball reached Guga, who struck powerfully from approximately 18 metres into the near corner. That goal reduced Hajduk's aggregate lead to 2:1 and confirmed that the visiting team would not be able to survive the remainder of the match simply by retreating towards its own goal.
Hajduk had no attacking response during the crucial periods of the match
Hajduk completed the first half without any real attacking impact. Pafos closed the spaces between the lines, quickly recovered second balls and forced the visitors into long clearances that provided no relief. An additional problem for the hosts was Jaja's injury towards the end of the first half, but even his departure did not change the basic pattern of the match. Vlad Dragomir, who replaced him, later took part in the move that produced the goal sending the match into extra time. Pafos therefore maintained its intensity despite the enforced substitution and continued attacking through the flanks and from set pieces.
Hajduk's first shot was not recorded until the 56th minute, when Šimun Hrgović tried his luck from a free kick, but Radosław Majecki was ready. Garcia then attempted to increase the team's energy and keep the ball farther away from his own penalty area by making substitutions. Abdoulie Sanyang entered at the beginning of the second half, while Marko Livaja and Niko Sigur were introduced in the 63rd minute. Nevertheless, Pafos continued to create danger, especially from set pieces and crosses. Goldar headed over the crossbar, Quina attempted an acrobatic overhead kick, and the hosts sent an increasing number of players towards Silić's goal in the closing stages.
As the match approached the 90th minute, Hajduk was being pushed deeper and deeper into its own half. The defence cleared a succession of balls, goalkeeper Silić stopped several attempts, and one late Pafos goal was disallowed for a foul. It appeared that the Split club would hold on and preserve its narrow aggregate lead, but the hosts finally capitalised on their continuous pressure in the second minute of stoppage time. Following yet another cross into the penalty area, Goldar rose highest and headed the ball into the net for 2:0. The aggregate score was then 2:2, making extra time unavoidable.
Immediately after conceding the equaliser, Hajduk had an opportunity to avoid extra time. Livaja produced a dangerous effort from a difficult position, but the ball did not end up in the net. It was a moment that could have completely changed the outcome because a late away goal would have shifted the burden back onto Pafos. Instead, the teams entered extra time in entirely different emotional states: the hosts were encouraged by their late equaliser, while Hajduk had lost in only a few minutes the advantage it had protected for almost the entire match. That difference was evident from the very first attack of extra time.
Biel scored in the 93rd minute, Correia completed the comeback
Pafos scored its third goal in the 93rd minute. Pêpê delivered a sharp cross from the right, Silić parried the ball, but Biel, namely Gabriel Teixeira, reached the rebound first and sent it into the net. With that goal, the Cypriot club moved 3:2 ahead on aggregate and, for the first time in the tie, entered a position that would take it through. Hajduk then had to abandon its defensive approach and search for a goal, but it was unable to build sustained pressure. Pafos dropped back several metres, closed off the centre of the pitch and tried to exploit the space opening behind the visitors' defence.
Hajduk's best situations in extra time came through Niko Sigur and efforts following individual runs, but Majecki and the Pafos defence kept a clean sheet. The hosts no longer needed to take the same risks as they had in normal time, allowing them to choose their moments to move forward more carefully. Time was rapidly running out for Hajduk, and every lost ball created an opportunity for a counterattack. The final decision came in the 117th minute, when João Correia converted Pêpê's assist to make it 4:0. After that, there was no realistic possibility of another comeback.
Pafos therefore secured a place in the Europa League third qualifying round, where it will face Austrian side Salzburg, as confirmed by the UEFA draw. For Hajduk, on the other hand, the defeat raised a series of questions about the way it managed the result, the team's ability to play through intense pressure and the range of options available during a match that, over 120 minutes, increasingly turned into a defence of its own penalty area. A two-goal advantage was not insignificant in itself, but it proved insufficient because Hajduk failed to score away from home or keep possession for long enough to slow the hosts' rhythm. The final 4:0 score was therefore not merely the result of a late collapse, but also of the cumulative pressure Pafos had applied from the first minute.
The European journey continues against Žalgiris
Elimination from the Europa League does not mean the end of Hajduk's European season. According to UEFA's draw, the loser of the Hajduk-Pafos tie will face the winner of Dinamo Tbilisi-Žalgiris in the Conference League third qualifying round. The Lithuanian club secured its progression in an exceptionally dramatic manner. After losing the first leg 3:0 in Georgia, Žalgiris won 7:2 in Vilnius on 30 July and advanced 7:5 on aggregate. UEFA's match record lists a hat-trick by Stanislav Bilenkyi, two goals from Nikola Petković and goals from Bryan Teixeira and Nemanja Mihajlović.
That result serves as a warning that Hajduk will have no room to underestimate its opponent in the next tie either. Against Dinamo, Žalgiris showed that it can play extremely attacking football and quickly turn a match into a sequence of chances and goals. Hajduk, by contrast, will have to restore the team physically and mentally within a very short period following 120 minutes of an exhausting match in Limassol. The first legs of the Conference League third qualifying round are scheduled for 6 August, with the return legs on 13 August, UEFA announced. That leaves little time for detailed corrections, meaning the coaching staff will have to quickly assess the condition of the players and select an approach capable of restoring stability to the team.
The tie against Žalgiris now carries additional weight because it represents the last remaining qualifying route to the autumn phase of European competition. Hajduk missed the opportunity to remain in the Europa League against Pafos, but it can still continue its European season through the Conference League. To do so, it will need to manage the match far more convincingly than it did in Limassol, particularly during phases when the opponent takes the initiative. The team will have to find a balance between defensive security and the ability to threaten in attack, because it has been shown that defending without possession for long periods carries a significant risk even when entering a second leg with an advantage.
The defeat to Pafos will be remembered for Goldar's dramatic stoppage-time goal and the rapid collapse at the beginning of extra time. At the same time, it serves as a warning of how quickly a first-leg advantage can be lost in European qualifying when one team imposes its intensity and the other fails to find a way to disrupt it. Hajduk showed in Split that it could outplay Pafos and beat it by two goals, but in Limassol it failed to reproduce anything close to the same level of control. The next tie against Žalgiris will therefore be not only a battle for progression, but also a test of the team's ability to recover from a painful European defeat in Limassol.
Sources:
- HNK Hajduk Split - official report from the first match, Hajduk-Pafos 2:0, and chronology of the key events (link)
- HNK Hajduk Split - second-leg preview, information about the stadium in Limassol and statements from coach Gonzalo Garcia (link)
- UEFA - official data from the first match of the Europa League second qualifying round (link)
- Sportnet - report, line-ups and chronology of the second-leg match Pafos-Hajduk 4:0 after extra time (link)
- AS - record of the key events and goalscorers in the second leg in Limassol (link)
- UEFA - Conference League third qualifying round draw and match dates (link)
- UEFA - official data on Žalgiris's 7:2 victory over Dinamo Tbilisi and the Lithuanian club's 7:5 aggregate progression (link)