Dynamo braced for Braga opener

FC Dynamo Kyiv will look to match their 2008/09 achievement and reach the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League as they take on SC Braga.

Previous meetings
• The sides are meeting for the first time in European competition.

• Dynamo have played ten previous games against Portuguese sides with a record reading W3 D0 L7 (W2 D0 L3 at home). They have lost their two most recent home fixtures against Portuguese opponents.

• Braga's only experience of Ukrainian opposition came in this season's UEFA Champions League group stage, when they lost 3-0 at home and 2-0 away against Dynamo's arch-rivals FC Shakhtar Donetsk.

Match background
• Dynamo are unbeaten in seven European home games – four wins and three draws – since a 2-1 UEFA Champions League loss to FC Barcelona on 9 December 2009. They have not conceded in their last four European games at the Valeriy Lobanovskiy Stadium.

• The Ukrainian side have not lost a home game in the UEFA Cup / UEFA Europa League since November 1992.

• Braga have scored only once away from home in Europe this season since the start of the UEFA Champions League group stage, with a 1-0 win at FK Partizan breaking up a run of three defeats and a draw.

• This is the furthest Braga have gone in a UEFA club competition, with two round of 16 appearances in the UEFA Cup (2008/09 and 2006/07) their best performance on the continent before this season.

Team facts 
• Roman Eremenko and Andriy Yarmolenko have both played in all ten of Dynamo's games since the start of the UEFA Europa League group stage. Artem Milevskiy is their top scorer in this season's competition with five goals.

• Alan is Braga's top UEFA Europa League scorer this season with two goals since the Arsenalistas entered the competition in the round of 32.

• Dynamo are the highest scoring side left in the competition with 20 goals, one more than FC Porto.

• Braga's last goal – Alan's round of 16 first-leg penalty against Liverpool FC – was their 100th in European competition. This is their 75th UEFA club competition game.

• The next goal Dynamo concede will be the 50th they have conceded in the UEFA Cup and UEFA Europa League.

• This is both sides' 53rd game in this competition; they have won 20 each, but Dynamo have claimed 17 draws to Braga's ten.

• Dynamo forward Andriy Shevchenko has faced Braga before, playing all 90 minutes as AC Milan beat the Arsenalistas 1-0 in the 2008/09 UEFA Cup group stage.

• Shevchenko played six UEFA club competition games against Portuguese sides with Milan and Chelsea FC, and is yet to end up on the losing side. His record comprised four home wins and two away draws, as well as three goals.

• Braga midfielder Hugo Viana took on Dynamo as a Newcastle United FC player in the 2002/03 UEFA Champions League first group stage, playing in the 2-0 loss in Ukraine.

• With Porto and SL Benfica also in the running, this is the first time three Portuguese sides have made the quarter-finals of the same UEFA competition.

• All four UEFA Europa League quarter-finals pit sides that have been in this competition since the start of the group stage (Dynamo, Porto, PSV Eindhoven and Villarreal CF) against clubs that transferred from the UEFA Champions League group stage (FC Spartak Moskva, FC Twente, Braga and Benfica).

• The overall winners will take on the victors of the contest between Benfica and PSV in the semi-finals on 28 April and 5 May, playing the first leg at home. The winners of that tie will be the nominal away side in the final at the Dublin Arena on 18 May.

• Should Braga meet Benfica, it would be the first time that two Portuguese sides would go head to head in a UEFA club competition tie.