Sporting CP v Vorskla facts

The fates of all four teams in UEFA Europa League Group E were sealed on matchday five, with Sporting CP qualifying as runners-up for the round of 32 – where they will appear for a record seventh time – and their matchday six visitors Vorskla Poltava eliminated.

• Sporting racked up their biggest European win in 28 years on matchday five, 6-1 at Qarabağ, to confirm their passage to the knockout phase in the wake of group winners Arsenal. They are three points behind the Gunners, who cannot be dislodged from top spot on account of their head-to-head advantage.

• Vorskla have taken just three points from their five matches – in a 1-0 win at Qarabağ. As they lost by the same score at home to the Azerbaijani champions, who also have three points, goal difference will be used to determine which of the two teams finishes bottom of the table if they both record the same result on matchday six.

Previous meetings
• Sporting snatched victory from the jaws of defeat on matchday two as they scored twice in the dying minutes to beat Vorskla 2-1 in Poltava, the Ukrainian side having led from the tenth minute in the clubs' first European engagement.

• Vorskla have had two previous knockout ties against Portuguese sides, losing both. They did gain a memorable consolation 2-1 home win against Benfica in the 2009/10 UEFA Europa League play-offs following a 4-0 first-leg loss in Lisbon.

• Sporting are unbeaten in seven UEFA competition games against opponents from Ukraine, winning six of them including all three at home, the most recent a 2-1 success (3-2 on aggregate) against Metalist Kharkiv in the quarter-finals of the 2011/12 UEFA Europa League.

Form guide
Sporting
• Sporting finished third in the 2017/18 Portuguese Liga. They suffered a shock 2-1 defeat to Aves in the Portuguese Cup final, but nevertheless claimed a place in the UEFA Europa League group stage.

• The Lisbon club have been regular participants in the UEFA Europa League since its inception in 2009/10, featuring in the competition proper in eight of its ten seasons, with this their fifth successful qualification in six attempts from the group stage. Semi-finalists in 2011/12, they reached the quarter-finals last season after transferring from the UEFA Champions League group stage.

• Sporting were defeated 1-0 at home by Arsenal on matchday three, ending a run of three European home wins without conceding. They have only lost at home on two other occasions in the UEFA Europa League proper; their overall record in Lisbon is W18 D8 L3.

Vorskla
• Vorskla secured a place in this season's UEFA Europa League group stage by finishing third in the 2017/18 Ukrainian Premier League – their joint-highest ever final placing, which matched their achievement in 1996/97, when they qualified for Europe for the first time.

• This is the club's seventh European campaign and their second in the UEFA Europa League group stage. They had to win three qualifying ties in 2011/12, including a play-off success against Dinamo Bucureşti, but their six group games yielded just two points and bottom place in a section featuring Standard Liège, Hannover and FC København.

• Vorskla's matchday three victory at Qarabağ was their first on the road in Europe since that August 2011 tie against Dinamo, and ended a six-match winless run (D2 L4).

Links and trivia 
• Sporting's presence in this season's UEFA Europa League means they share the record for the most participations in the competition proper, matching Ajax and Salzburg with eight. Their qualification for the round of 32 has also equalled Ajax's record of seven appearances in the competition's knockout phase.

• The Portuguese club's 6-1 win at Qarabağ was the fourth time Sporting have scored five or more goals in a UEFA Europa League match, group stage to final – a new landmark figure for the competition, with five other clubs having achieved the feat on three occasions.

• Vorskla captain Volodymyr Chesnakov, ever-present in this group stage, is the only current player who featured in that celebrated 2009 win at home to Benfica, although head coach Vasyl Sachko played a starring role that night, scoring one of Vorskla's goals.

The coaches
• Marcel Keizer was named as the new Sporting coach on 8 November, filling the gap left by the sacking of José Peseiro a week earlier. The 49-year-old Dutchman was lured to Lisbon from Al-Jazira in the United Arab Emirates, his previous job in Europe having been at Ajax, where he was promoted from the youth team in June 2017 to replace Peter Bosz as head coach but lasted only half a season. His playing career started at Ajax but was spent mostly in the Dutch Eerste Divisie (second tier) at Cambuur.

• A tall centre-forward, Sachko played in the Ukrainian top flight for Volyn Lutsk and Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih before moving to Vorskla in 2008. He has been with the Poltava club ever since, four years as a player then two as assistant coach before taking on the head coach role in the summer of 2014. As a result of leading Vorskla to third place in Ukraine in 2017/18, he qualified the club for the UEFA Europa League group stage, of which he had a brief taste as a player in 2011/12.