Bayern tread new ground with BATE test

FC BATE Borisov and FC Bayern München meet for the first time in a competitive fixture with each side having begun Group F in positive fashion.

• While Bayern's 2-1 home defeat of Valencia CF raised few eyebrows, BATE caught the eye with a 3-1 victory at LOSC Lille, their first win in the UEFA Champions League group stage at the 13th attempt.

Match background
• This is the first time the German giants have faced opponents from Belarus, while BATE faced Bayern's city rivals TSV 1860 München in the 2002 UEFA Intertoto Cup second round. BATE won 1-0 away – Artem Kontsevoi scoring in the 74th minute having missed a penalty in the first half – and 4-0 at home.

• BATE won a sixth straight Belarusian title in 2011 to earn themselves a chance of claiming a UEFA Champions League group stage place for a third time. They overcame FK Vardar 3-2 at home and on aggregate in the second qualifying round, and in the next stage needed an own goal for a 1-1 draw with Debreceni VSC in Belarus before a 2-0 away success.

• A 2-0 home win against Hapoel Kiryat Shmona FC put BATE in control of their play-off tie, a 1-1 draw in Israel taking Viktor Goncharenko's side through 3-1 on aggregate.

• Remaining unbeaten at home in qualifying maintained a trend for BATE who had done the same in the preliminaries for the 2011/12 UEFA Champions League, recording two wins and a draw, and again in 2008/09 when they had a win and two draws.

• From the group stage of those two campaigns and their UEFA Europa League participations in both 2010/11 and 2009/10, BATE's home record is W3 D2 L7.

• At home in last season's group stage BATE lost 5-0 against FC Barcelona and 1-0 against FC Viktoria Plzeň. They drew their other home game 1-1 against AC Milan and finished fourth in Group H.

• Bayern are hoping to go one step further than last season when they reached the final at their own Fußball Arena München, only to lose on penalties to Chelsea FC. Away from home in the group stage they beat Villarreal CF 2-0, drew 1-1 at SSC Napoli and lost 2-0 at Manchester City FC. On their travels in the knockout rounds they lost 1-0 at FC Basel 1893, beat 2-0 Olympique de Marseille and went down 2-1 at Real Madrid CF.

• Bayern, European champions on four occasions, have lost three of their last four UEFA Champions League away games, winning one of their last five.

Team ties
• Aleksandr Hleb faced Philipp Lahm and Bastian Schweinsteiger when Belarus and Germany played out a 2-2 friendly draw in Kaiserslautern on 27 May 2008. In the 73rd minute Belarus introduced Aleksandr Pavlov who provided the assist for Vitali Bulyga's equaliser two minutes from time.

• Hleb was at VfB Stuttgart from 2000 to 2005 and then from 2009 until 2010. In each case he was a team-mate of Mario Gomez and he also played with Lahm, who had a two-year loan spell with Stuttgart from September 2003. Hleb played alongside Mario Mandžukić at VfL Wolfsburg in 2011/12.

• Mandžukić came up against Aleksandr Yurevich, Hleb, Vitali Rodionov and Maksim Bordachev when Croatia faced Belarus in 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying. Mandžukić's Croatia triumphed 3-1 away and then 1-0 at home.

• Rodionov played for SC Freiburg in Germany's second division between January and June 2009, scoring four goals in 12 league appearances.

• Anatoliy Tymoshchuk came up against Yegor Filipenko, Hleb, Pavlov and Yurevich when Ukraine met Belarus in the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign. Ukraine won 1-0 at home with the game in Minsk ending goalless.

• Franck Ribéry's France drew 1-1 against Bordachev's Belarus in a UEFA EURO 2012 qualifier in Minsk on 3 June 2011. Ribéry scored in Les Bleus' 3-1 victory against a Belarus side featuring Bordachev, Rodionov, Artem Radkov, Renan Bressan and Denis Polyakov in a FIFA World Cup qualifier on 11 September 2012 in Paris, Aleksandr Gutor an unused substitute.