Today Shakhtar will play their home game against Benfica in the knockout stage of the Europa League
KIEV. 20 Feb. UNN. In the first match of 1/16 finals of the Europa League “Shakhtar” in Kharkov will host the Lisbon “Benfica”, reports UNN , citing the press service of orange-and-black.
Both teams played in the autumn in the group stage of the Champions League “miners” with 6 points took the third place in group C after “Manchester city” and “Atalanta” and the eagles scored 7 points in group G, behind “SB Leipzig” and “lion”.
The key difference between the training of Shakhtar from the standard schedule, Benfica have a long break in the Premier League. Winter wards Luis Castro held 2 fees in Belek, Turkey, where he had 8 friendlies. Rival until February issued in the championship streak of 16 wins in a row and 2 last rounds met today with heavy opponents (Porto and Braga) and were defeated.
Benfica came in the 1/16 finals with the task to continue the successful trend: they sixth time at this stage and earlier always passed to the next round.
On the history of the relationship teams in the 2007/08 season the clubs met in the group stage of the Champions League. In the 2nd round, Shakhtar won the “estádio da Luz” in the only goal scored by Jadson, and in December the game, Benfica took revenge in Donetsk (brace from óscar Cardozo goal and Cristiano Lucarelli penalty in the first half).
Note that the starting whistle at the RSC “Metalist” at 19:55 will give the Scottish referee Madden.
We will remind that yesterday it became known personnel losses of the Pitmen.