Ajax scent end of five-year exile

AFC Ajax hope to exorcise the ghosts of past home defeats in UEFA Champions League qualifying when they take on FC Dynamo Kyiv.

• The Amsterdam outfit missed out on the group stage in successive seasons in 2006/07 and 2007/08 after key reverses on home soil against FC København and SK Slavia Praha but they will hope to make amends against Dynamo and end their five-year exile from the UEFA Champions League proper.

• Ajax are once again well placed to progress having drawn 1-1 at the Valeriy Lobanovskiy Stadium in the teams' maiden meeting. Denys Garmash's 56th-minute dismissal gave Ajax a numerical advantage and they looked set to take control of the tie when Jan Vertonghen headed them in front 60 seconds later, yet Dynamo levelled in the 66th minute through Oleh Gusev.

Match background
• Second in the Dutch Eredivisie in 2009/10, Ajax reached the play-offs after passing a test of nerve against PAOK FC. Martin Jol's men were held 1-1 at home in the first leg before a 3-3 draw in Greece put them through on the away-goals rule.

• Dynamo, last season's Ukrainian Premier League runners-up, had no such difficulties in a 6-1 aggregate success against Belgium's KAA Gent in the third qualifying round that included a 3-1 win away from home in the second leg.

• Ajax had better luck last season in their UEFA Europa League play-off against ŠK Slovan Bratislava – they won 7-1 on aggregate winners and eventually progressed to the last 32 where they lost to Juventus.

• Dynamo finished bottom of their group in the 2009/10 UEFA Champions League after winning just one game.

• For Ajax, four times champions of Europe, this is the first home match against Ukrainian visitors.

• Dynamo's away record against Dutch opposition is W1 D1 L3. Their most recent visit to the Netherlands ended with a 0-0 draw at Feyenoord in the 2002/03 UEFA Champions League group stage.

• Dynamo's only victory at a Dutch team was a 3-1 success against PSV Eindhoven in the 1997/98 group stage, in which Andriy Shevchenko, then in his first spell at the club, hit the third goal in the final minute.

• Dynamo won their two previous two-legged ties against sides from the Netherlands. They beat PSV in the semi-finals of the 1974/75 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and FC Utrecht in the first round of the same competition in 1985/86, and on both occasions went on to lift the trophy.

Team ties
• Dynamo's Russian coach, Valeri Gazzaev, had mixed fortunes against Dutch opposition with PFC CSKA Moskva. In the UEFA Champions League he oversaw home and away losses to PSV in the 2007/08 campaign. In the UEFA Cup, though, his CSKA side drew 0-0 at SC Heerenveen in the 2005/06 UEFA Cup group stage and won 3-1 at Feyenoord at the same stage in 2008/09.

• André Ooijer played twice against Dynamo for PSV in the 2000/01 UEFA Champions League group stage. After appearing as a substitute in a 2-1 home win in September 2000, he scored the only goal of the return fixture in Ukraine the following month.

• Shevchenko scored the opening goal for AC Milan against Ooijer's PSV in the 2005 UEFA Champions League semi-final that the Dutch club lost on away goals. Ooijer also made a losing debut for Blackburn Rovers FC against Shevchenko's Chelsea FC in August 2006.

• Shevchenko scored twice for former club Milan in victories against Ajax. He found the net in a 3-2 win at San Siro in the 2002/03 quarter-finals and the following season struck the only goal as Milan won a group-stage game in Amsterdam.

• Dynamo new boy Goran Popov spent the last two seasons in the Netherlands with SC Heerenveen. He scored one of his two Eredivisie goals at Ajax last November – but his team still lost 5-1.

• Artem Milevskiy scored a Panenka-style penalty when Ukraine beat the Netherlands 2-1 in their opening game of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship in Portugal. Together with Taras Mikhalik, however, he finished on the losing side in the final as a Dutch side including Demy de Zeeuw, Urby Emanuelson and Kenneth Vermeer gained revenge with a 3-0 victory.