AEK Athens and Sturm vie for opening points

Having first met 14 years ago, AEK Athens FC take on SK Sturm Graz again in UEFA Europa League Group L, in what will be the visitors' 50th game in the competition.

Previous meetings
• The sides met in the 1997/98 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup second round, with Dumitru Dumitriu's AEK getting the better of Ivica Osim's Sturm, winning 2-0 at home before losing 1-0 in Graz.

• The teams for their last meeting in Athens on 23 October 1997 were:
AEK: Atmatzidis, Kasapis, Dobos, Kostenoglou, Vlachos (Batista 68), Savevski, Kostis (Veridiano 44), Nikolaidis, Kopitsis, Katsavos (Grétarsson 47), Kalitzakis.
Sturm: Sidorczuk, Popović, Haas, Prilasnig, Vastić (Kocijan 80), Foda, Reinmayr, Neukirchner, Milanič (Posch 11), Mählich, Schupp.

• Current Sturm boss Franco Foda played in both legs of this tie, receiving a yellow card in the first leg, as did striker Mario Haas, now 37.

• AEK technical director Arnar Grétarsson also featured in both legs.

Match background
• In total, AEK's six games against Austrian sides have ended W2 D1 L3 (W2 D0 L1 at home). They have not been paired with an Austrian side since eliminating FC Salzburg in the first round of the 2007/08 UEFA Cup.

• Sturm's six games against Greek teams have ended W3 D0 L3 (W1 D0 L2 in Greece). Their most recent Greek opponents were Panathinaikos FC, against whom they twice lost 1-0 in the 2009/10 UEFA Europa League group stage.

• AEK's Nikos Liberopoulos featured in both legs of Panathinaikos's meetings with Sturm in the 2000/01 UEFA Champions League second group stage; Sturm won 2-1 at home and 2-0 away, with Haas scoring in both fixtures. Imre Szabics came on as a substitute for Sturm in the latter game.

• AEK's record in ten UEFA Cup and UEFA Europa League group stage home games is W2 D3 L5. In both of their most recent group campaigns they totted up a win, a draw and a defeat at home.

• Sturm have recorded four draws and four defeats on the road since their last European away win, a 1-0 victory at FC Metalist Kharkiv in the UEFA Europa League play-offs on 27 August 2009.

• Sturm have yet to win a UEFA Cup or UEFA Europa League group stage away game, recording a draw and two defeats in their three fixtures to date.

Team facts
• This is Sturm's 50th UEFA Europa League and UEFA Cup game.

• AEK head coach Manuel Jiménez was in charge of Sevilla FC when they took on an FC Salzburg side featuring Sturm's Milan Dudić in the 2008/09 UEFA Cup first round, both legs ending 2-0 to the Spanish side. Dudić played in the first leg and was an unused substitute in the second.

• AEK's coach is Spaniard Jiménez, who was left-back at Sevilla for the bulk of his playing career, returning to the club to coach their B-team and, from 2007 to 2010, their senior side. He won the first major trophy of his coaching career, the 2011 Greek Cup, at AEK.

• German defender Foda finished his playing career at Sturm following spells with the likes of Bayer 04 Leverkusen and VfB Stuttgart. He joined the club's coaching staff after hanging up his boots, and following a brief first stint in charge in 2003, has been first-team boss since 2006.