Match background
• Debrecen won five of their six games in qualifying – including away at FC Levadia Tallinn and PFC Levski Sofia – but they know they face a much tougher test at Anfield, home of the five-times European champions.
• Quarter-finalists in the UEFA Champions League last season, Liverpool are competing in their sixth successive group-stage campaign and not once have they failed to reach the last 16.
• Rafael Benítez's side lost just one of 12 matches in the 2008/09 competition – at home to Chelsea FC in the last eight – and will be determined to make a winning start.
• For Debrecen this is the second time they have visited England and they will hope to fare better than the previous occasion when they lost 3-0 to Manchester United FC in a third qualifying round tie in August 2005 – the first instalment of a 6-0 aggregate defeat.
• There are four survivors in Debrecen's squad from that last visit to north-west England: Tibor Dombi played while Csaba Bernáth, Zoltán Kiss and Ádám Komlósi were on the bench. Kiss and Dombi featured in the return.
• Liverpool have had mixed fortunes against Hungarian opposition in the past, beating Budapest Honvéd FC 2-0 at Anfield to set up an identical aggregate success in the 1965/66 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup quarter-finals.
• In the second round of the same competition in 1974/75, Liverpool conceded an 89th-minute equaliser to Ferencváros's János Maté and paid the price for that 1-1 draw as an ensuing stalemate in Budapest saw them eliminated on away goals.
• That Liverpool defeat was one of only three that English sides have suffered in 15 two-legged contests against Hungarian opposition.
Team ties
• Debrecen may be new to the UEFA Champions League but Läszló Bodnar has previously faced Liverpool in the competition. Bodnar was on the bench for former club FC Dynamo Kyiv's 1-0 defeat at Anfield in September 2001 and then played the first 56 minutes as Liverpool won 2-1 in Kiev the following month.
• Liverpool midfielder Yossi Benayoun scored his first international goal at any level for Israel's Under-16 side against Hungary, securing a 1-0 home win for his team on 20 September 1995.
No comments:
Post a Comment