Espanyol forward Wu Lei made history to become the first Chinese man to score in a major European competition, excluding the preliminary rounds.

The 27-year-old achieved this feat by getting on the score-sheet for Espanyol in their UEFA Europa League group stage encounter against CSKA Moscow as his side win 2-0 at the VEB Arena in Moscow on Thursday.

He opened the scoring on 64 minutes, clinically dinking the ball over CSKA goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev after a slick pass from Matias Vargas.

Wu, who was later booked for a dive, joined Espanyol from Shanghai SIPG in January for a reported 2 million euros (2.25 million U.S. dollars).

He became the first Chinese to score in Spain's top league in March in a 3-1 victory over Real Valladolid. He also scored during qualifying for this season's Europa League and has two goals in 14 appearances for Espanyol this term.

In addition to being China's first group stage scorer, Wu Lei matched two other national records after winning. Having already scored in qualifying for Espanyol, he is now level with Wang Chu, who scored in both legs for Luxembourg's Jeunesse Esch in a 2013/14 UEFA Europa League qualifier, as China's top scorer in UEFA club competitions. His eighth appearance in a European game means he has also matched former PSV and Austria Wien man Sun Xiang's record for UEFA competition appearances.

With this win, the La Liga side have achieved a win and a draw from the first two matches and rose to the second spot in Group H of the competition.

(With input from agencies)