Osmanlıspor v Olympiacos background

Olympiacos travel to Ankara needing to reverse several negative trends if they are to get past Osmanlıspor in a still-goalless UEFA Europa League round of 32 contest.

• The first instalment of this tie finished in stalemate, though Osmanlıspor had the numerical advantage after Olympiacos defender Bruno Viana was red-carded with 17 minutes to play at the Stadio Georgios Karaiskakis.

Previous meetings
• The clubs met for the first time in the opening leg on 16 February, which was Osmanlıspor's first encounter with Greek opponents.

• Olympiacos's four games against Turkish sides have ended W1 D1 L2 (W1 D1 at home, L2 in Turkey).

• Turkish teams have had the better of the 20 UEFA club competition matches between the neighbouring nations' teams: W9 D7 L4. Only one of the most recent 14 of those fixtures produced a Greek victory – PAOK's 1-0 defeat of Fenerbahçe in the 2010/11 UEFA Europa League play-offs.

Form guide
• Osmanlıspor's European home form in 2016/17 is excellent: W5 D1, conceding in just one of those six games in Ankara.

• Olympiacos's away form this term has been mixed: W2 D1 L2.

• This is Osmanlıspor's second European campaign and their most successful by some distance. They fell at the first hurdle, as Ankaraspor, in the 2005 UEFA Intertoto Cup – their only previous tilt.

• Olympiacos have fallen at the first springtime hurdle in the last four seasons, since making it to the UEFA Europa League round of 16 in 2011/12.

Links and trivia
• The journey from Piraeus to Ankara is a little over 800km.

• Olympiacos's Óscar Cardozo (2014–16) played alongside Osmanlıspor's Hakan Arıkan (2015) and Aykut Demir (2013–16) during their respective stints at Trabzonspor.

• Olympiacos's Manuel da Costa also has Turkish experience (Sivasspor, 2013–15).

Olympiacos forward Óscar Cardozo during his Trabzonspor days©Getty Images

• Olympiacos's Felipe Pardo and Osmanlıspor's Raul Rusescu played together at Braga in 2013/14. Rusescu had worked with Olympiacos's Diogo Figueiras and Marko Marin at Sevilla in the first half of that season.

• Osmanlıspor's Raheem Lawal and Aminu Umar play alongside Olympiacos forward Brown Ideye for Nigeria.

• Olympiacos are one of eight domestic champions involved in the round of 32, along with Ludogorets Razgrad (BUL), APOEL (CYP), København (DEN), Hapoel Beer-Sheva (ISR), Legia Warszawa (POL), Astra Giurgiu (ROU) and Beşiktaş (TUR).

• Osmanlıspor and Genk are the only sides to have progressed from the second qualifying round of this season's competition to the round of 32; APOEL, Beer-Sheva, Legia, Ludogorets and København have had similarly long campaigns, having started out in the equivalent round of the UEFA Champions League.

• Olympiacos midfielder Tarik Elyounoussi turns 29 the day of this game.

The coaches
• Hired in July 2015, Mustafa Akçay earned Osmanlıspor European qualification with a fifth-place finish last term. He had been in charge of a number of lower-profile teams in Turkey before guiding Trabzonspor through the 2013/14 UEFA Europa League group stage.

• Paulo Bento was appointed by Olympiacos in August 2016 following a brief interlude in Brazil. A player for Benfica and Sporting CP in his native Lisbon, he later won two Portuguese Cups as Sporting coach and was Portugal boss from September 2010 to September 2014.

• Bento was Portugal coach when his side lost 3-1 to Turkey in a June 2012 friendly – the Crescent Stars' first victory against Portugal.

Penalty shoot-outs
• Neither Osmanlıspor nor Olympiacos have featured in a UEFA penalty shoot-out.