Dynamo Kyiv vs Barcelona

Barcelona will be looking to save a disastrous season so far when they take on Dynamo Kyiv at the NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium in a must-win UEFA Champions League fixture.

Staring in the face of adversity, Dynamo Kyiv are a step away from exiting this season’s Champions League edition on the back of a three-game losing start to their Group E campaign. Though they’ve racked up three consecutive domestic victories since a 1-0 defeat to Barcelona in the reverse fixture, Mircea Lucescu’s men have yet to score in the Champions League this season. In addition to their goalscoring woes, the Ukrainians have collected just three wins from their 13 encounters against Barcelona across major European competitions (D1, L9), losing all five in the 21st century by an aggregate score of 11-2. What’s more, Dynamo Kyiv lament a disastrous Champions League record against Spanish opponents this millennium, having failed to win any of their 11 such match-ups in the competition to date (D3, L8).

In the meantime, a series of unfortunate events led to Barcelona sacking the now ex-manager Ronald Koeman down the final stretch of last week. However, the Dutchman’s dismissal has done little good to the Catalans, who take the field on the back of a 1-1 home draw with Deportivo Alaves. Barcelona defeated Dynamo Kyiv on Matchday 3 to bounce back from a brace of 3-0 losses to Bayern Munich and Benfica. However, that doesn’t change the fact they’ve scored the fewest goals after three matches of a single European campaign. After falling to Benfica in their most recent Champions League travel, Barcelona could lose back-to-back away games in the competition for the first time since April 2017. As they’ve netted under 1.5 goals in each of their last four competitive fixtures, that prospect looks to be in the realm of possibility.