Shortly before its start let’s pay attention to interesting peculiarities of unseeded teams, one of which the White-Blues will face.
Six of them have already won the UEFA Cup/Europa League – Liverpool FC, Sevilla FC, Tottenham Hotspur FC, PSV Eindhoven, AFC Ajax and RSC Anderlecht. The best achievement of our club in this competition is the 2009/09 season semifinal.
Tottenham Hotspur are the top team in UEFA ranking among Kyivans’ potential opponents. They are 14th. Dynamo head coach Serhiy Rebrov featured for Spurs in early 2000s. He scored 10 goals in 59 matches.
By the way, his son Dmytro is training at Tottenham academy.
The worst ranking position among clubs the White-Blues can face belongs to EA Guingamp – 110th. Dynamo never faced them in euro cups just like Sevilla FC (29th in UEFA ranking), BSC Young Boys (70th), VfL Wolfsburg (94th) and Torino FC (101st).
The most titled are Liverpool FC (41st in UEFA ranking), who have 11 European trophies in their collection. In 2001 the White-Blues lost against English side twice in Champions League – 0:1 and 1:2. Liverpool won the UEFA Cup/Europa League three times. So did Sevilla FC (pictured).
Six times our club faced PSV Eindhoven (27th in UEFA ranking) and Celtic FC (51st). Dynamo scored nine goals against Dutch side. Kyivans’ biggest win was against RSC Anderlecht – 4:0 (2000/01 season), but they also conceded 11 opposing this team.
Villarreal CF (36th) are the only club that has never conceded featuring against the White-Blues.
The most scandalous was the Champions League fixture that took place on September 15 2004 inRome, where Dynamo faced AS Roma (52nd). After the first half the score was 1:0 for Kyivans, but referee Anders Frisk stopped the match as one of supporters threw something at him and thus injured Swede. Roma suffered 0:3 forfeit defeat.
In 2010 our team opposed AFC Ajax (26th in ranking) (1:1 and 1:2).
As for the forthcoming drawing, both Dynamo head coach and team captain are sure that the White-Blues will do their best to reach the next stage no matter whom they face.
Olexandr Shovkovskyi: “I won’t think about drawing at all. We must respect any opponent and demonstrate our best play”.
Serhiy Rebrov: “There are no bad teams at this stage. Still Dynamo shouldn’t be afraid of anyone. We must get ready for every game thoroughly”.
Oleh Zadernovskyi
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