Chelsea will be looking to make it six wins out of six as they prepare to move into the knockout phase as Group L winners. Hungarian champions Vidi, on six points, can join them in the round of 32 by avoiding defeat, but qualification is out of their hands.
• Vidi have beaten PAOK twice but lost both games to BATE Borisov, including a 2-0 defeat in Belarus on matchday five, which means if they finish level on points with BATE, they will be eliminated. They therefore need to achieve a better result against Chelsea than the Belarusian champions manage at PAOK if they are to progress. A defeat eliminates Vidi, as does a BATE victory.
• Chelsea have won all five matches and scored ten goals while conceding just one. Their biggest win came on matchday five as they overcame a PAOK side reduced to ten men after eight minutes 4-0 at Stamford Bridge, Olivier Giroud scoring twice to add to his winning goal at BATE on matchday four.
Previous meetings
• A 70th-minute strike from Álvaro Morata enabled Chelsea to defeat Vidi 1-0 at home on matchday two in the London club’s first UEFA competition encounter with a Hungarian club.
• Vidi’s only previous home encounter with English opposition brought arguably the most famous victory in the club’s history – a 1-0 win in the 1984/85 UEFA Cup quarter-final against Manchester United that was followed by a 5-4 penalty shoot-out triumph. The Hungarian side went on to reach the final, which they lost to Real Madrid.
Form guide
Vidi
• Vidi were Hungarian champions last season for the third time – after 2010/11 and 2014/15 – and were one step away from a UEFA Champions League group stage debut after qualifying wins against Dudelange, Ludogorets and Malmö – three teams who have also found their way into the UEFA Europa League group stage. However, a 3-2 aggregate defeat by AEK Athens ended that part of their 2018/19 European journey.
• Vidi have reached the UEFA Europa League group stage once before, in 2012/13. Although they progressed no further, they did collect six points thanks to landmark wins against Sporting CP (3-0) and Basel (2-1) in their opening two home fixtures; they lost the third 0-1 to Genk.
• The club’s 13 European games this season have yielded just four victories, the 2-0 victory at PAOK on matchday three ending a six-game winless stretch. The 1-0 win against the Greek side in the reverse fixture halted a three-match run at home without a victory (D1 L2).
Chelsea
• Chelsea could finish only fifth in defence of their Premier League title last season, but booked a first ever place in the UEFA Europa League group stage twice over by winning the FA Cup for the eighth time, defeating Manchester United 1-0 in the final.
• Although the west London side are new to this stage of the UEFA Europa League, they won the competition on their only previous participation, in 2013, having crossed over to the knockout phase in mid-season from the UEFA Champions League. Their route to the final in Amsterdam, where they defeated Benfica 2-1, incorporated two wins and two defeats away from home.
• Chelsea have won both of their Group L away fixtures 1-0, their first back-to-back European wins on the road since the 2013/14 UEFA Champions League group stage. Their longest such sequence before that was when they won six in a row back in 2003/04 before Monaco beat them 3-1 at the Stade Louis II in the UEFA Champions League semi-final.
Links and trivia
• Chelsea were the invited guests of Ferencváros to open their new stadium – where this match is being played – in August 2014, Cesc Fàbregas scoring the late winner in a 2-1 friendly victory for the London club.
• Vidi skipper Roland Juhász’s first match of an eight-year career at Anderlecht was a UEFA Champions League group game against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in September 2005.
• Juhász’s 94th and penultimate international for Hungary was a 0-4 defeat in the round of 16 at UEFA EURO 2016 against Belgium in which Chelsea’s Eden Hazard scored a brilliant solo goal – moments after Juhász had been substituted.
• Carrying on from their triumph in 2013, Chelsea are on a run of eight consecutive UEFA Europa League wins, the joint-second longest sequence in the history of the competition, group stage to final. However, they will have to win every game through to the semi-finals this season if they are to equal Atlético Madrid’s record 15-match run.
• Chelsea are one of three clubs boasting maximum points from their first five fixtures, alongside Salzburg (Group B) and Eintracht Frankfurt (H).
• The Blues have the best defensive record in this season’s competition, conceding just one goal. No team has ever gone through a UEFA Europa League group with six clean sheets; the record of one goal conceded is held jointly by Standard Liège (2011/12) and Salzburg (2017/18).
The coaches
• His playing career having been curtailed at an early age through injury, Belgrade-born Nikolić began coaching at various levels with local club Rad and graduated to the position of head coach in 2008. His reputation grew year on year during spells with Vojvodina, Partizan and Slovenian club Olimpija Ljubljana, and he was re-employed by Partizan in August 2016, promptly winning the league and cup double. Further success followed in 2017/18 as he masterminded Vidi’s Hungarian league triumph in his debut campaign.
• Named as the new Chelsea boss in succession to his fellow Italian, Antonio Conte, in July 2018, Maurizio Sarri is widely considered to be one of Europe’s most progressive coaches. He paid his dues in Italy’s lower leagues with a multitude of clubs before getting his big break at Empoli, whom he steered into Serie A, before replacing Rafael Benítez at Napoli in 2015. Three seasons in Naples all brought top-three finishes, his entertaining side running Juventus close for the Scudetto in 2017/18.
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