Vangelis Pavlidis struck 19 goals in 34 Portuguese Primeira Liga games in 2024/25. One of them in April, after only 40 seconds, was the fastest ever by an SL Benfica player away to FC Porto. It set the 26-year-old en route to becoming the second Benfiquista to hit a hat-trick in the fixture after Rui Aguas in 1987, and helped them win 4-1. It wasn’t Pavlidis’s only treble of the season. The Greece striker registered one in the first 30 minutes of a 5-4 loss to Barcelona in January. It was the third-fastest hat-trick from the start of a UEFA Champions League game after Robert Lewandowski for FC Bayern München against FC Salzburg in 2022 (23 minutes) and Marco Simone for AC Milan against Rosenborg in 1996 (24 minutes). It also made Pavlidis the first man to score thrice against Barça in the competition since Newcastle United’s Faustino Asprilla and Dynamo Kyiv’s Andriy Shevchenko did so in 1997. Benfica will play CA Boca Juniors in Miami, Auckland City FC in Orlando and FC Bayern München in Charlotte in Group C of the FIFA Club World Cup. They could face arch-rivals Porto in what would be a seismic quarter-final.