Valencia set sights on second BATE success

FC BATE Borisov made a strong start to Group F but must now regroup after Valencia CF brought them back to earth with a bump on matchday three.

• A Roberto Soldado hat-trick gave Valencia a 3-0 win in Minsk in the teams' first meeting, meaning they joined BATE and FC Bayern München on six points.

• That continued Valencia's improvement after a 2-1 opening loss at Bayern was followed by a 2-0 home defeat of LOSC Lille. BATE won 3-1 in northern France on matchday one, their first group stage victory at the 13th attempt, before swiftly recording a second, beating Bayern by the same score at home.

Match background
• The game in Minsk was the first time the sides had met on a competitive stage and the first time Valencia had crossed swords with a team from Belarus.

• BATE have now lost all seven encounters with Spanish opponents and not scored in the last six, conceding 17 goals in that time and 21 overall. Away from home they have conceded ten goals and scored only one – and that a late retort in the first of those games at Villarreal CF in a 2007/08 UEFA Cup first round tie when the score was already 4-0.

• Valencia, who finished third in last season's Liga, were unbeaten at home in the 2011/12 UEFA Champions League. They began with a 1-1 draw against Chelsea FC and then beat Bayer 04 Leverkusen 3-1 and KRC Genk 7-0, their biggest victory in UEFA competition. They are unbeaten in seven home games (W5 D2) in the competition since a 1-0 loss against Manchester United FC on 29 September 2010.

• 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 in qualifying outside Belarus maintained a trend for BATE who had done the same in the preliminaries for the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League, recording three away wins, and 2011/12, with a victory and two draws, their two previous group stage appearances. They also won the away leg of their UEFA Europa League play-off ties in both 2009/10 and 2010/11.

• In the group stage of all five campaigns their away record is: W3 D5 L5.

• BATE began last season's group stage with a 1-1 draw at FC Viktoria Plzeň. They lost their other away games, 2-0 at AC Milan and 4-0 at FC Barcelona, and finished fourth in Group H.

Team ties
• Yegor Filipenko, Vitali Rodionov, Aleksandr Volodko, Maksim Bordachev and Aleksandr Hleb all appeared as Belarus lost 4-0 to Spain in a FIFA World Cup qualifier at the Dinamo Stadium in Minsk on 12 October. Renan Bressan replaced Rodionov after 65 minutes; Aleksandr Pavlov and Aleksandr Gutor were both unused substitutes, as was Soldado for the visitors.

• Hleb was an FC Barcelona player between 2008 and 2012 but, having made 36 appearances in his first season, spent the remaining three years out on loan.

• Fernando Gago played for Real Madrid CF in their 2-0 home UEFA Champions League group stage victory against BATE at on 17 September 2008 but suffered a hamstring injury and was replaced on 36 minutes. In the reverse fixture on 25 November, Gago played the full 90 minutes as Madrid won 1-0.

• Adil Rami was on the losing side for France when a Belarus team containing Aleksandr Yurevich, Hleb and Rodionov beat them 1-0 in a UEFA EURO 2012 qualifier in Paris on 3 September 2010.