Eintracht Frankfurt v Marseille facts

The die has been cast in Group H, with Eintracht Frankfurt already qualified and Marseille, last season's runners-up, eliminated, but the German side will be keen to maintain their perfect record in the section with a fifth successive victory, which could clinch top spot ahead of also-qualified Lazio.

• Eintracht beat Lazio (4-1) and Apollon Limassol (2-0) in back-to-back home games before completing the double over Apollon on matchday four with a 3-2 win in Cyprus. If the German side record a better result against Marseille than Lazio manage away to Apollon, they will go through as group winners.

• Marseille have picked up a solitary point from their first four matches, a 2-2 draw at Apollon preceding home (1-3) and away (1-2) defeats against Lazio that confirmed the premature elimination of a side that went all the way to the final in 2017/18.

Previous meetings
• Eintracht defeated Marseille 2-1 at the Stade Vélodrome on matchday one with an 89th-minute Luka Jović winner – a result that would shape the teams' fortunes for the rest of the campaign. It was the first time the clubs had met in UEFA competition.

• Frankfurt have a flawless record at home to French clubs, winning all three matches, the most recent 3-0 against Bordeaux in the 2013/14 UEFA Europa League group stage with Marco Russ scoring one of the goals.

• Marseille have won just one of nine away fixtures in Germany and have lost their last four games there without scoring, most recently in last season's UEFA Europa League quarter-final first leg at RB Leipzig (0-1). It was, however, on German soil that OM celebrated their greatest success, beating AC Milan 1-0 in Munich to win the inaugural UEFA Champions League final in 1993.

Form guide
Eintracht
• A dramatic 2017/18 German Cup final victory over Bundesliga champions Bayern München – 3-1 in Berlin – not only gave Eintracht their first major silverware in 30 years but also secured their first European campaign in five.

• Eintracht's only European participation in the past dozen seasons came in 2013/14, when they successfully negotiated the UEFA Europa League play-offs and group stage, topping their section with 15 points, before going out on away goals to Porto in the round of 32.

• The 1980 UEFA Cup winners won four of their five home fixtures in that 2013/14 campaign, including all three in the group stage, and have not lost at home in Europe since 2006 – a run of eight matches (W6 D2). Eintracht have won 13 of their last 17 European home games, losing just one, and have an overall UEFA Europa League record, home and away including play-offs, of W11 D2 L1.

Marseille
• Marseille finished fourth in last season's Ligue 1 to claim an immediate return to the UEFA Europa League.

• This is the Cote d'Azur club's fourth UEFA Europa League group stage participation. They failed to reach the knockout phase at the first attempt, in 2012/13, but managed to do so in 2015/16 and 2017/18, going all the way in the latter to the final in Lyon, where they lost 3-0 to Atlético Madrid. They were runners-up also in the 1998/99 and 2003/04 UEFA Cups.

• Marseille's run to last season's UEFA Europa League final featured nine away games, only one of which – against Athletic Club in the round of 16 – they won, with five ending in defeat. They last won away in the UEFA Europa League group stage on matchday six of the 2015/16 season – 4-2 at Sigma Olomouc – since when their record is D2 L3.

Links and trivia 
• International team-mates:
Jetro Willems, Jonathan de Guzmán & Kevin Strootman (Netherlands)
Makoto Hasebe & Hiroki Sakai (Japan)
Ante Rebić & Duje Ćaleta-Car (Croatia)
Luka Jović, Filip Kostić, Mijat Gačinović & Nemanja Radonjić (Serbia)

• Eintracht's Willems and Marseille's Strootman played together at PSV Eindhoven from 2011 to 2013.

• Marseille defender Ćaleta-Car played under current Eintracht coach Adi Hütter at Salzburg in 2014/15.

• Kevin Trapp is on loan at Eintracht from Paris Saint-Germain, with whom he has played four times against Marseille, winning on each occasion.

• Eintracht are one of four clubs with maximum points from the opening four UEFA Europa League fixtures, the others being Salzburg (Group B), Dinamo Zagreb (D) and Chelsea (L).

The coaches
• Austrian coach Adi Hütter was appointed by Eintracht Frankfurt as the successor to Bayern München-bound Niko Kovač in May 2018, having just led Young Boys to their first Swiss league title in 32 years. A midfielder who spent seven years with Salzburg, he returned to lead the club to a domestic double in 2014/15 after managerial spells at Altach and Grödig. He then crossed the border to spend the next three seasons in Berne.

• Marseille coach since October 2016, Rudi Garcia started out as a midfielder at LOSC Lille, returning to coach the club between 2008 and 2013 and masterminding their Ligue 1/Coupe de France double in 2010/11. He subsequently spent two and a half seasons in charge of Roma, leading the Giallorossi to back-to-back runners-up spots in Serie A. In 2017/18 he steered OM from the third qualifying round of the UEFA Europa League all the way to the final in Lyon, where they were defeated by Atlético Madrid.