Defeated without scoring in their opening three UEFA Europa League Group F fixtures, Dudelange will be hoping for a change in fortune as they travel to Olympiacos, who beat them 2-0 in Luxembourg on matchday three.
• The first team from Luxembourg to compete in a UEFA group stage, Dudelange pushed both Milan (0-1 home) and Betis (0-3) hard without reward in their first two matches before experiencing similar disappointment against Olympiacos. The record champions of Greece drew their opening game 0-0 at home to Betis before surrendering a lead to lose 3-1 in Italy.
• Dudelange will be out if they lose.
Previous meetings
• Dudelange had never faced opposition from Greece in UEFA competition until matchday three.
• Olympiacos’s one previous game at home to a side from the Grand Duchy, in the first round of the 1986/87 European Cup Winners’ Cup, resulted in a 3-0 win over US Luxembourg, the Piraeus side also going on to win the second leg by the same score.
Form guide
Olympiacos
• Last season Olympiacos surrendered the Greek Superleague title they had won in each of the previous seven campaigns, finishing third behind AEK Athens and PAOK and thus ending up in the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round, where they handsomely defeated Luzern (4-0 home, 3-1 away) before seeing off Burnley in the play-offs (3-1 home, 1-1 away).
• Although Olympiacos have been involved in the knockout phase of the UEFA Europa League on five occasions, this is only the second season in which they have participated in the group stage, their previous effort in 2016/17 having brought two wins, two draws and two defeats and qualification for the next round only on the head-to-head rule.
• Outside the qualifying phase the Piraeus club have won just one of their last ten UEFA Europa League home fixtures (D5 L4). They have also won only one of their last six home group games in the UEFA Champions League, losing four.
Dudelange
• The premier force in Luxembourg since the turn of the millennium, Dudelange won their 14th national championship last season, completing a hat-trick of titles. They narrowly lost this season’s UEFA Champions League first qualifying round tie against Hungary’s Vidi but made historic amends by subsequently overcoming Drita, Legia Warszawa and, in the play-offs, CFR Cluj to reach the UEFA Europa League group stage.
• Dudelange’s previous best European performance came in 2012/13, when they reached the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round before falling to Hapoel Tel-Aviv in the UEFA Europa League play-offs (1-3 home, 0-4 away).
• Dudelange won two successive away games in the qualifying phase – 2-1 at Legia and 3-2 at Cluj – but leading into this season they had lost eight games on the trot outside Luxembourg, the last six without scoring.
Links and trivia
• Dudelange are one of five clubs playing in the UEFA Europe League proper for the first time this season – and the very first from Luxembourg, which has become the 39th nation to be represented in the competition’s group stage.
• All six of the goals conceded by Dudelange in this group stage have been scored in the second half.
• Dudelange are one of only two teams yet to collect a point or score a goal after three matchdays in this season’s UEFA Europa League; Qarabağ (Group E) are the other.
The coaches
• Pedro Martins was named Olympiacos coach in April 2018, becoming the club’s fifth Portuguese boss in six years after Leonardo Jardim, Vítor Pereira, Marco Silva and Paulo Bento. He had not previously worked outside his homeland, his last three spells in the dugout before the move to Greece having brought UEFA Europa League qualification for Marítimo, Rio Ave and Vitória Guimarães. A holding midfielder, he was capped once by Portugal during a three-year spell with Sporting CP from 1995–98.
• The son of Klaus Toppmöller, the coach who led Bayer Leverkusen to the 2002 UEFA Champions League final, Dino had a lengthy career in Germany’s lower leagues before ending it as a player-coach with Luxembourg side Hamm Benfica. Having steered the club to promotion, he joined Dudelange in 2016 and promptly won the Luxembourg double, adding a second league title in 2017/18 and then defying the odds to mastermind a landmark qualification for the UEFA Europa League group stage.
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