By Ben Banks

Copyright scotsman

A forgotten Hibs star has captained his current club to Champions League history – as another ex-ace features against Real Madrid. He might not be the first name you think of when you speak of Hibs, but Abdellah Zoubir has forged a fine career for himself after time in Leith. A winger or an attacking midfielder, Zoubir played 16 times for Hibs in the 13/14 season, scoring once and then his loan from Istres was brought to an end, his parent club suffering relegation to the third tier of French football that season. He arrived at Easter Road during the same term as Liam Craig, Owain Tudur Jones, Ryan McGivern, Fraser Mullen, Rowan Vine, James Collins, Michael Nelson, Paul Heffernan, Daniel Boateng, Danny Haynes and Duncan Watmore. Qarabag is where’s he been since 2018 and in Azerbaijan, Zoubir has made himself a legend with six titles and is considered one of their best players of the modern age. He has been named captain and Qarabag are in this season’s league phase of the Champions League, where they achieved an incredible result in their opening game. 2-0 down away at Portuguese giants and competition regulars Benfica, Zoubir played the whole 90 minutes, grabbing an assist as Qarabag stunned their hosts 3-2, Oleksiy Kashchuk’s 86th minute sparking the first ever win for an Azerbaijani team in the Champions League outside of qualifying. It’s a result that has sparked major dominoes, with Benfica boss Bruno Lage immediately sacked and legendary manager Jose Mourinho lined up to take over as per multiple reports. Leandro Andrade, Qarabag forward, told Sport TV post-match: “We had a difficult start, but we just continued to believe that we could get something out of the game. We staged a comeback. I already knew it was going to be a spectacular experience, but the outcome of the game made it an even better day for us. I tried to think about this every day, coming to a stadium where I watched many games as a child and scoring a goal. You have to believe that things are possible, even if it seems difficult. “It was a difficult game. Benfica are a very good side and we know how hard we had to fight to make this happen. A 2-0 lead is a very dangerous scoreline in football because if the other team manages to make it 2-1, it completely changes the confidence in the game. That’s what happened. We want to keep our feet on the ground and take it game by game. We came to Estádio do SL Benfica believing we could take points from here.” Meanwhile, CJ Egan-Riley got the chance to run out at the Bernabeu against Real Madrid. The defender spent time on loan at Hibs in the 22/23 season from Burnley and form back at Turf Moor earned him a move to Marseille in Ligue 1 in the summer, featuring off the bench in a 2-1 loss. Two Kylian Mbappe goals cancelled out a Timothy Weah effort after Los Blancos veteran Dani Carvajal was sent off. Boss Roberto De Zerbi said: “I’m so unhappy, we could have won this. We have lots of new players in our club and it’s not easy to get them all ‘connected’ in the moves we want. But I’ve said to my team that we certainly did well enough to have taken much more from. “I certainly didn’t tell them ‘we could have come away with more’ as a criticism! It’s because I’m totally sure we could have won. I think we were a little timid in the first 20 minutes but then we cut loose. It’s painful to me that after their red card we weren’t able, as a group, to play 20 or 30 metres higher up the pitch so as to go after the match and win.”