Lugano v Dynamo Kyiv facts

Defeated on matchday one, Lugano are looking for their first points in UEFA Europa League Group B as they play host in St Gallen to a Dynamo Kyiv side that won their opening fixture.

• The Swiss side fell to a 1-0 defeat at F.C. Copenhagen on 19 September as Dynamo won by the same scoreline against their own Scandinavian opponents, Vitaliy Buyalskiy's 84th-minute strike settling the outcome against Malmö in the Ukrainian capital.

Previous meetings
• Lugano's only official encounters against Ukrainian opponents came in the 2001/02 UEFA Champions League second qualifying round, when they lost 0-3 at Shakhtar Donetsk before winning the second leg 2-1 in Switzerland.

• Dynamo have played Swiss clubs 12 times previously in UEFA competition and have won three and lost three of the six games in Switzerland, emerging victorious from the most recent, 1-0 at Young Boys thanks to another Buyalskiy goal, in the 2017/18 UEFA Europa League group stage. Their only other previous UEFA Europa League fixture on Swiss soil also resulted in victory, 2-0 against Thun in the 2013/14 group stage.

Form guide
Lugano
• Lugano finished third in the 2018/19 Swiss Super League – 45 points behind champions Young Boys – to secure group stage involvement in the UEFA Europa League for the second time in three seasons.

• Also third in 2016/17, Lugano – from the Italian-speaking Ticino canton – secured a first ever group stage participation the following season, having been absent from UEFA competition since 2002/03. They won three and lost three of their six matches, finishing third in Group G.

• The Swiss side have won four of their last five European home fixtures, although the exception came on matchday two of their 2017/18 UEFA Europa League campaign, a 1-2 defeat by Romanian side FCSB.

Dynamo Kyiv
• Ukrainian league runners-up to Shakhtar Donetsk last term, for the third year in a row, Dynamo entered the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round but were defeated by Club Brugge (0-1 a, 3-3 h), which sent them directly into the UEFA Europa League group stage.

• This is Dynamo's seventh UEFA Europa League group stage campaign, five of the previous six having been successful, including last season when three wins and two draws secured their place in the knockout phase with a game to spare. They then eliminated Olympiacos to reach the last 16, where they were overwhelmed 8-0 on aggregate by Chelsea (0-3 a, 0-5 h).

• Dynamo took seven points from nine on their travels in last season's group stage. The defeat at Stamford Bridge ended a run of six away games unbeaten in the UEFA Europa League (W2 D4). They have won half of their 18 group games in the competition outside Ukraine (W9 D4 L5).

Links and trivia 
• Domen Črnigoj (Lugano) and Benjamin Verbić (Dynamo) are current team-mates for the Slovenia national side.

• Lugano's Filip Holender and Dynamo's Tamás Kádár play together for Hungary.

• Dynamo's Carlos Zambrano played in Switzerland for Basel on loan in 2018/19 but did not feature in any of the club's four games against Lugano.

• Dynamo Kyiv hold the record for the most draws registered in the UEFA Europa League, group stage to final (19).

The coaches
• A former Swiss international midfielder whose 35 caps included a couple of outings at UEFA EURO 2004, Fabio Celestini started out with hometown club Lausanne before moving abroad to play in France (Troyes, Marseille) and Spain (Levante, Getafe). His coaching career took off back at Lausanne in 2015/16 as he led the club to promotion as Challenge League champions. He left in April 2018 shortly before their relegation from the top flight but resurfaced at Lugano six months later and led the side to a third-placed finish in the Super League.

• Following a lengthy stint as Dynamo Kyiv's sporting director, club great Olexiy Mykhaylychenko was appointed as head coach for a second time in August 2019 following the dismissal of Aleksandr Khatskevich. A star of EURO '88 and the same year's Olympic Games in Seoul, where he won a gold medal, the blond left-footer claimed league titles for Dynamo (four) as well as his subsequent clubs Sampdoria and Rangers (five). A two-time Ukrainian champion as a coach in his first stint at Dynamo, from 2002–04, he led the Ukraine national side from January 2008 to December 2009.