Leverkusen plan more pain for Shakhtar

Early Group A leaders FC Shakhtar Donetsk visit Bayer 04 Leverkusen hoping for a better night than they managed on their last visit to Germany.

• Shakhtar's UEFA Champions League hopes crumbled with a 3-0 defeat at Borussia Dortmund in last season's last 16 but return to Germany buoyed by a positive start this term, having already won at Real Sociedad de Fútbol and drawn with Manchester United FC.

• Leverkusen will be looking to build on their matchday two win over La Real – and leapfrog Shakhtar in the process.

Match background
• Leverkusen have an unbeaten home record against Ukrainian opposition, even if they took just one point from FC Metalist Kharkiv in last season's UEFA Europa League group stage, drawing 0-0 at home and losing 2-0 away.

• The Bundesliga side had previously defeated Metalist 6-0 on aggregate in the 2010/11 UEFA Europa League round of 32, winning 4-0 in Ukraine – where Eren Derdiyok, Gonzalo Castro and Sidney Sam (2) scored – and then prevailing 2-0 at home, Simon Rolfes and Michael Ballack on target. Taison, now a Shakhtar player, was involved in all four matches for Metalist.

• Leverkusen's overall home record against Ukrainian sides is W3 D2 L0. The last Ukrainian visitors to the BayArena in the UEFA Champions League were FC Dynamo Kyiv in December 2004 when a 3-0 home victory took Klaus Augenthaler's side into the round of 16 at their opponents' expense.

• Leverkusen's matchday two win over Real Sociedad was their seventh in a row in home matches in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League, including their 2011/12 and 2004/05 campaigns.

• Shakhtar's aforementioned defeat at Dortmund in last season's UEFA Champions League round of 16 consigned them to a 5-2 aggregate reverse. They had led twice in the 2-2 first-leg draw – Darijo Srna and Douglas Costa scoring – but each time Dortmund came back to equalise.

• Shakhtar's most recent victory on German soil came at VfB Stuttgart in the 2005/06 UEFA Cup group stage, Fernandinho and Ciprian Marica earning a 2-0 win. Srna played that night with Tomáš Hübschman on the bench. The Ukrainian side's overall record in Germany is: W2 D1 L3.

• Shakhtar's most memorable meeting with a Bundesliga side was their 2-1 defeat of SV Werder Bremen in the 2009 UEFA Cup final. Luiz Adriano hit the opening goal for a Shakhtar team also including Andriy Pyatov, Srna, Olexandr Kucher, Dmytro Chygrynskiy and Ilsinho. Sebastian Boenisch was in the Bremen side.

Team ties
• In the 2001/02 UEFA Champions League, Sami Hyypiä helped Liverpool FC beat Dynamo Kyiv home and away in the first group stage – winning 1-0 in England and 2-1 in Ukraine – and then faced a Galatasaray AŞ side coached by Mircea Lucescu in the second group stage. Lucescu's Galatasaray earned two draws, 0-0 at Anfield and 1-1 in Turkey, but still finished bottom of the group, with Liverpool advancing to the last eight where they lost to Leverkusen.

• Lucescu's first meeting with German opposition came on 23 October 1974 when his FC Dinamo Bucureşti side were held 1-1 at home by 1. FC Köln en route to a 4-3 aggregate defeat in the 1974/75 UEFA Cup second round. As a coach he was in charge of the Romania team beaten 2-1 by West Germany at the 1984 UEFA European Championship.

• Goalkeeper Andrés Palop scored a crucial goal against Shakhtar at their old RSC Olympiyskiy Stadium for his former club Sevilla FC in March 2007. His header four minutes into added time in the second leg of a UEFA Cup round of 16 tie made it 2-2 on the night – and 4-4 on aggregate – and Sevilla went on to win the tie in extra time. It remains Palop's only career goal and was a key moment in holders Sevilla retaining the UEFA Cup that season.

• Derdiyok suffered at Shakhtar's hands with FC Basel 1893 in the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League group stage, losing 2-1 at home and 5-0 in Donetsk.

• Pyatov, Vyacheslav Shevchuk, Kucher and Taras Stepanenko were in the Ukraine team that won 3-1 at Boenisch's Poland in a 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifier in March this year.

• On 11 October Pyatov, Shevchuk, Stepanenko and Yaroslav Rakitskiy helped Ukraine to a 1-0 win against Poland in Kharkiv.

• Boenisch's Poland were eliminated from UEFA EURO 2012 after a 1-0 loss to Hübschman's Czech Republic in the group stage.

• Ömer Toprak was in the Turkey side eliminated by the Croatia of Srna and Eduardo in the UEFA EURO 2012 qualifying play-offs. In June 2012, ahead of the EURO finals, he helped Turkey to a 2-0 friendly win over a Ukraine side including Pyatov, Shevchuk, Kucher and Rakitsky.

• Robbie Kruse suffered a 6-0 defeat with Australia in a 7 September friendly against a Brazil side including Bernard and unused substitute Fernando. Three days later Son Heung-Min's South Korea succumbed 2-1 in a home friendly against Srna and Eduardo's Croatia.