Dynamo and BATE primed for first encounter

A novel experience awaits both FC Dynamo Kyiv and FC BATE Borisov when the sides meet in the Ukrainian capital for their first UEFA Europa League Group E fixture.

Previous meetings
• The sides are meeting for the first time in UEFA club competition, with the match also representing the two clubs' maiden experience against a side from their opponents' nation.

Match background 
• Dynamo are back in the competition for the first time in its new guise, having lost out to fellow Ukrainians FC Shakhtar Donetsk in the semi-finals of the 2008/09 UEFA Cup; the final edition of the competition in its old format.

• Dynamo have not lost in seven UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League home games since a 3-0 defeat by RSC Anderlecht in the second round of the 1992/93 edition. Five of those seven fixtures ended in draws.

• Having made their UEFA Champions League group stage debut in 2008/09, BATE made it to the UEFA Europa League group phase for the first time last season, picking up seven points in their six games but failing to reach the round of 32.

Team facts
• Russian coach Valeri Gazzaev is in his second European season at Dynamo having joined the club in May 2009. Capped eight times by the Soviet Union, he spent his best years as a striker with FC Lokomotiv Moskva and FC Dinamo Moskva. As a coach, he won the 1995 Russian title with FC Alania Vladikavkaz, and then scooped three championships, three Russian Cups and the 2004/05 UEFA Cup with PFC CSKA Moskva.

• BATE coach Viktor Goncharenko is still just 33, having become the youngest coach to take charge in a UEFA Champions League group stage game when BATE took on Real Madrid CF on 17 September 2008. He was just 31 at the time. A defender whose career was ended by injury at the age of 25, he has been in charge at BATE since 2007, winning three successive Belarusian titles.

• Five games have been played between Ukrainian and Belarusian sides with the results making pretty grim reading for BATE; Ukrainian clubs have won the last four fixtures since FC Ataka-Aura Minsk earned an unlikely 2-1 win at FC Shakhtar Donetsk in the 1996 UEFA Intertoto Cup.