Feyenoord v Young Boys facts

With veteran Dutch coach Dick Advocaat having replaced Jaap Stam at the end of last month, Feyenoord will be looking to recover lost ground in Group G as they renew battle with leaders Young Boys, who defeated them 2-0 in Berne on Matchday 3 thanks to penalties in the first half-hour from Roger Assalé and Jean Pierre Nsamé.

• Feyenoord have lost both of their away fixtures in the group, also going down 1-0 at Rangers on opening night, but they did follow that by defeating Porto 2-0 at home. Swiss champions Young Boys have also accumulated all of their points at home, an opening 2-1 loss at Porto offset by back-to-back wins against Rangers (2-1) and Feyenoord at the Stade de Suisse, the second of which lifted them to the top of the group with a two-point advantage.

Previous meetings
• Feyenoord's overall record in Rotterdam against Swiss visitors is W2 D1 L1, and they have won the last two such fixtures, most recently beating Basel 1-0 in the second round of the 2000/01 UEFA Cup to complete a 3-1 aggregate triumph.

• Young Boys had played four previous UEFA encounters against Dutch opposition prior to Matchday 3, all in the 1987/88 European Cup Winners' Cup. They knocked out Den Haag in the second round on away goals (1-2 a, 1-0 h) but lost both matches 1-0 to Ajax in the quarter-finals. They are therefore bidding to avoid a third defeat out of three in the Netherlands.

Form guide
Feyenoord
• Dutch champions in 2016/17 and cup winners in 2017/18, Feyenoord won no trophies last season but finished third in the league to return to the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round, where they were surprisingly eliminated in 2018/19 by Slovakian side Trenčín 5-1 on aggregate (0-4 a, 1-1 h).

• This season they reversed those scorelines (4-0 h, 1-1 a) to overcome Dinamo Tbilisi before seeing off Hapoel Beer Sheva in style in the play-offs with a pair of 3-0 victories. This is the club's third appearance in the UEFA Europa League group stage. They topped their section in 2014/15 but finished third in 2016/17 despite opening with a 1-0 home win against eventual winners Manchester United.

• Feyenoord won their first five home UEFA Europa League group games and have six victories in seven matches overall. They have won all three European games in Rotterdam this term, scoring nine goals and conceding none.

Young Boys
• Champions of Switzerland for the 13th time in 2018/19, having claimed their first league title in 32 years 12 months earlier, Young Boys also reached the UEFA Champions League group stage for the first time, finishing bottom of a section in which they competed with Juventus, Manchester United and Valencia.

• Having defeated Dinamo Zagreb in last season's UEFA Champions League play-off, YB were unable to stage an encore this term, losing on away goals to Serbian champions Crvena zvezda (2-2 h, 1-1 a). They are therefore competing instead for the sixth time in the UEFA Europa League group stage, from where they have made further progress twice before, in 2010/11 and 2014/15, but not in their two most recent campaigns, in 2016/17 and 2017/18.

• The Berne club have won just one of their last 19 European away games – in Zagreb last season – and their record on the road in the UEFA Europa League proper is W2 D5 L11, their last such win having come on Matchday 5 of the 2014/15 campaign when they overcame Slovan Bratislava 3-1 in the Slovakian capital. Their record since then is D4 L4.

Links and trivia 
• Feyenoord striker Nicolai Jørgensen and Young Boys defender Frederik Sørensen are Danish internationals.

• YB's Serbian international Miralem Sulejmani spent five seasons with Feyenoord's arch rivals Ajax, having moved to Amsterdam for a then Dutch record transfer fee after an impressive debut Eredivisie campaign in 2007/08 with Heerenveen.

The coaches
• Advocaat was appointed as the interim head coach of Feyenoord for the remainder of the 2019/20 season on 30 October following Stam's resignation two days earlier. The 72-year-old is considered one of the Netherlands’ all-time great coaches having had three stints in charge of the national side, and has also been the coach of five other countries – the UAE, South Korea, Belgium, Russia and Serbia. At club level he is most closely associated with PSV Eindhoven, Rangers and Zenit, winning national championships with all three plus the UEFA Cup with the Russian club in 2008.

• Appointed by Young Boys as the successor to Adi Hütter in July 2018, Gerardo Seoane emulated his Austrian predecessor by steering the Berne club to the Swiss Super League title. He also oversaw YB's debut UEFA Champions League campaign, which ended with a home win against Juventus. The former midfielder has a close and lengthy association with his local club Luzern, with whom he started and ended his playing career and also came through the coaching ranks, eventually replacing Markus Babbel as head coach in January 2018.