RADU DRAGUSIN was sent off after just SEVEN minutes in Tottenham’s Europa League opener against Qarabag.
The Romanian was brought into central defence to play alongside Micky van de Ven at the heart of defence.
However, just seven minutes into Spurs’ Europa League, Dragusin was sent for an early shower.
It came as he was caught sleeping on the ball by live-wire forward Juninho.
After poking the ball away from Dragusin, Juninho managed to get his body across Dragusin before tumbling to the floor after a trip and the pulling of his shirt.
The foul left French official Willy Delajod with no choice but to send him off for a last-man foul.
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It made Dragusin the first player ever to be sent off on their Europa League debut for Tottenham.
Youngster Lucas Bergvall was sacrificed in favour of Destiny Udogie by manager Ange Postecoglou as part of a tactical switch in putting Ben Davies to centre-back to ensure Spurs kept a steady defence.
But a moment later, the North London side showed their fangs by pouncing on some sloppy play by Qarabag.
Dominic Solanke stole the ball high up the pitch before slipping in Brennan Johnson to his right, who then side-footed a shot into the far left bottom corner to make it 1-0 to the home side.
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It represented Johnson’s third goal in as many games.
The match had been delayed by 35 minutes after Qarabag were caught in traffic on their way to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
But it made no difference to Tottenham, who played out a 3-0 win with Pape Matar Sarr and Dominic Solanke getting on the scoresheet.
New Europa League format explained
THE Europa League has been given a revamp this season, with a whole new group-stage format.
All 36 teams are in one big league.
Each team will play eight matches in the opening phase – against seeded opposition, in a system designed to ensure that teams play opponents of similar difficulty.
At the end of the league phase, the top eight teams in the “final” table will automatically go through to the last 16, where they will be joined by the eight play-off winners of ties between the sides placed ninth to 24th in the table.
The bottom 12 teams are eliminated from Europe entirely.
Despite there being just eight matches in the opening phase, European matches will be spread over 10 midweek slots.
The knockout phase of the tournament remains the same as previous years.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
