Chelsea's bid to make it two UEFA Europa League titles in as many appearances continues at home to a Dynamo Kyiv side with a strong round of 16 record against English teams.
• Chelsea have won seven of their eight matches in this UEFA Europa League campaign, drawing the other. They dominated Group L in the autumn before coasting to a 5-1 aggregate victory over Malmö in the round of 32.
• Dynamo also made relatively serene progress through Group K, qualifying as section winners ahead of Rennes, Astana and Jablonec. In the round of 32 they knocked out Olympiacos, following a 2-2 away draw with a 1-0 home win.
Previous meetings
• The clubs have been paired together once before, in the 2015/16 UEFA Champions League group stage when Chelsea, competing as English champions, got the better of their Ukrainian counterparts, drawing 0-0 in Kyiv and winning 2-1 in London thanks to a brilliant late Willian free-kick. Both clubs went on to reach the knockout phase, Chelsea as group winners, but exited together in the round of 16.
• Chelsea's only other previous encounters with Ukrainian opposition also came in the UEFA Champions League, two years earlier. Defeated 2-1 at Shakhtar Donetsk, they won 3-2 at home, but Willian proved the decisive figure on that occasion too as his two goals for Shakhtar at Stamford Bridge proved the difference in taking the Ukrainian side through as group runners-up at Chelsea's expense as both clubs finished on ten points. The London club, however, went on to win the UEFA Europa League in the spring.
• Dynamo have a wealth of experience against English sides. They have lost half of their 28 previous meetings and have been beaten on 11 of their 14 visits to England, where they have never won and failed to score in nine of those matches. Their last visit was in that 2015/16 UEFA Champions League campaign, when they drew 0-0 at Manchester City in the round of 16 second leg having lost 1-3 at home.
• Dynamo's UEFA Europa League record on English soil is D1 L2 but they have won both of their two knockout ties, in the last 16 against Manchester City in 2010/11 (2-0 home, 0-1 away) and Everton in 2014/15 (1-2 away, 5-2 home).
Form guide
Chelsea
• Chelsea finished fifth in defence of their Premier League title last season, and beat Manchester United 1-0 in the FA Cup final to book a first ever place in the UEFA Europa League group stage.
• The London side eased through to the UEFA Europa League knockout phase, doing the double over PAOK (1-0 away, 4-0 home) and BATE Borisov (3-1 home, 1-0 away) before Vidi, who had lost 1-0 at Stamford Bridge, denied them a clean sweep with a 2-2 draw in Budapest on matchday six. In the round of 32 they defeated Malmö away (2-1) and at home (3-0), Ross Barkley and Olivier Giroud scoring in both games.
• This is Chelsea's second appearance in the UEFA Europa League knockout phase, their first, in 2012/13, having concluded with victory in the competition overall. Their route to that final in Amsterdam, where they defeated Benfica 2-1, incorporated three successive 3-1 wins at Stamford Bridge, the first of them against Steaua Bucureşti in the round of 16 after a 1-0 first-leg defeat in Romania.
• Chelsea are 11 games unbeaten in the UEFA Europa League, including the last three matches of their victorious 2013 campaign, the draw at Vidi the only game they did not win. They have yet to suffer a home defeat in this competition (W7 D1), although the win against Malmö was their first in five springtime European fixtures at Stamford Bridge (D2 L2).
Dynamo
• Ukrainian league runners-up to Shakhtar Donetsk last term, Dynamo entered the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round, defeating Slavia Praha (1-1 away, 2-0 home) before going out by the same aggregate score in the play-offs to Ajax (1-3 away, 0-0 home).
• Dynamo's sixth UEFA Europa League group stage campaign proved, like four of the previous five, to be successful, three wins and two draws securing a safe passage with a game to spare. They then eliminated Olympiacos thanks to a late Benjamin Verbič equaliser in Piraeus and a single goal from new signing Fran Sol in Kyiv.
• The club's best UEFA Europa League performance was in 2014/15, when they reached the quarter-finals, having also been semi-finalists in the last UEFA Cup of 2008/09. This is their fourth round of 16 tie, the first two having both ended in victory – those successes against Manchester City and Everton – before they were knocked out by Lazio last season (2-2 away, 0-2 home). Their away record in the round of 32 is D1 L2.
• Dynamo ended a run of six winless European away matches (D4 L2) with their 2-1 victory at Rennes on matchday three, following up with a 1-0 success at Astana on matchday five. The Ukrainian club have lost just one of their last nine UEFA Europa League away fixtures, group stage to final (W4 D4), scoring at least once in all of them.
Links and trivia
• Willian spent six years at Shakhtar and was named the Ukrainian Premier League's player of the year in 2011. He won the league four times and the Ukrainian Cup on three occasions, beating Dynamo in the final in the first two. He was also a UEFA Cup winner with Shakhtar in 2008/09, playing in both legs against Dynamo in the semi-final.
• Dynamo's Hungarian international defender Tamás Kádár played in England for Newcastle and Huddersfield (loan) from 2008–12.
• Maurizio Sarri met Dynamo twice as Napoli coach in the 2016/17 UEFA Champions League group stage, winning 2-1 in Kyiv – where Jorginho played the full 90 minutes – and drawing 0-0 in Naples.
• Pedro scored against Dynamo in Barcelona's 2-0 win at the Camp Nou in the 2009/10 UEFA Champions League group stage; he also featured in the return fixture in Kyiv, won 2-1 by the visitors.
• Dynamo goalkeeper Denys Boyko faced Gonzalo Higuaín and Jorginho when Dnipro defeated Napoli in the 2014/15 UEFA Europa League semi-finals 2-1 on aggregate, with the second leg played in Kyiv.
• Higuaín, Chelsea's new loan signing from Juventus, played for AC Milan in this season's group stage, scoring two goals in five appearances.
• Giroud is bidding to score in a sixth successive UEFA Europa League match and is now joint second in this season's goal charts with six, one behind Salzburg's Munas Dabbur. Willian is also second in the assists chart, with five, two behind Igor Stasevich of eliminated BATE.
• Chelsea's Ruben Loftus-Cheek is one of only two players to have scored a hat-trick in this season's UEFA Europa League proper, on matchday three at home to BATE. The other is Salzburg's Takumi Minamino, against Rosenborg.
• Chelsea were one of seven teams to come through the group stage undefeated and are now one of only three to have retained that status after the round of 32, together with Villarreal and Eintracht Frankfurt.
• Chelsea are one of only two clubs still in the competition to have previously won the UEFA Europa League, alongside three-time winners Sevilla. Five others lifted the trophy in its previous guise as the UEFA Cup.
• Dynamo's draw at Olympiacos in the first leg of their round of 32 tie was their 19th in the UEFA Europa League, group stage to final – the most by a club in the competition, one more than Lazio.
• Dynamo are one of four clubs participating in the UEFA Europa League round of 16 for the second successive season, alongside Arsenal, Salzburg and Zenit.
The coaches
• Named as the new Chelsea boss in succession to his fellow Italian, Antonio Conte, in July 2018, Maurizio Sarri is widely considered to be one of Europe's most progressive coaches. He paid his dues in Italy's lower leagues with a multitude of clubs before getting his big break at Empoli, whom he steered into Serie A, and then replaced Rafael Benítez at Napoli in 2015. Three seasons in Naples all brought top-three finishes, his entertaining side running Juventus close for the Scudetto in 2017/18.
• Hired as Dynamo coach in July 2017, Aleksandr Khatskevich won seven successive league titles with the club as a player between 1997 and 2004, having also claimed four straight championships with Dinamo Minsk in his native Belarus. He later worked with Dynamo's youth and reserve teams before taking charge of the Belarus national side from 2014 to 2016. He was capped 38 times by his country, scoring four international goals, three of them in qualification for the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
