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Today in Nyon, Switzerland, the draw for the 1/16 final of the 2020/21 Europa League took place, during which Belgian Brugge was determined as Dynamo Kiev’s rival, and Israeli Maccabi became the opponent of Shakhtar.
Sport.ua presents an express analysis of the closest rivals of our teams in the second most prestigious European Cup.
BRUGGE (Belgium)
Brief business card. The “Bruges” football club was founded in 1891. It is the 15-time Belgian football champion, only surpassed by the country’s undisputed leader, Anderlecht, with 34 titles. It is “Bruges” the current champion of Belgium, and he won the last league tie with a handicap of 15 points over second “Ghent” Roman Yaremchuk, although the season was not played until the end due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the current Belgian championship, Club Brugge is also the leader, 2 points ahead of the next Genk.
Club Brugge’s highest record in the UEFA European Cup is in the 1977/78 European Cup final, where the Belgians lost to Liverpool, and in the 1975/76 UEFA Cup final. , when the Black and Blues lost again to Liverpool. , but together (2: 3, 1: 1).
The total cost of the footballers of the “Bruges” first team as of today is estimated by the Transfermarkt portal at 144 million euros (Dynamo – at 100 million euros).
In the classification of football clubs, calculated on the basis of the last 5 years of performances in European competitions, Club Brugge is ranked 43 (Dynamo – 31).
I walk this season of European competition. Club Brugge started Euroseason 2020/21 with the Champions League group. Initially, he ended up in the same quartet with Borussia Dortmund, Lazio and Zenit. As a result, the “black-blue” finished in third place with 8 points. The Belgians won two of their victories over Zenit (2: 1 – away and 3: 0 – at home), and also drew in two games with Lazio (1: 1 – at home and 2: 2 – away).
Club Brugge’s top scorer in this Euroseason is 28-year-old midfielder Hans Vanaken, who has scored 3 goals in 6 games. As a reminder, it was this footballer who scored the winning goal against Bruges against Dynamo in the home game (1: 0) in the 2019/20 Champions League standings.
Head coach. The team is led by Belgian specialist Philippe Clement, 46. He has worked at Club Brugge since July last year and, in addition to last season’s championship title, he managed to play twice in the group stage of the Champions League with the Black-and-Blues. Including, under the leadership of Clemente, “Bruges” last season passed in the standings of “Dynamo” (1: 0, 3: 3), after which the leadership of the Kiev club fired Alexander Khatskevich.
FC Bruges. Felipe Clemente
Before that, Clement won the Belgian title at Genk in 2018/19, and was also named coach of the year that year. Clement began his career as a coach in the youth teams “Brujas” in 2011, later joining the coaching staff of Michel Prudhomme and Juan Carlos Garrido in the first team.
Clement’s favorite formations during his time at Club Brugge are 3-5-2 (easily transformed into 5-3-2) and 4-1-4-1. The coach uses both formations approximately in equal parts, if we take into account all the official fights of the “black-blue” since the summer of last year.
Briefly about the composition. The current Bruges have a pretty strong lineup from a staff point of view. This season, the team leaders can safely be called the aforementioned Hans Wanaken, captain Rud Wormer and young Senegalese winger Crepin Diatt.
The 21-year-old African is now showing significant progress. In particular, if Diatta scored 7 goals in 22 matches of the last Belgian championship, now Crepin sent the same number of goals into the rival goal net to Bruges after the results of 13 matches. The Senegalese is the most expensive player in the current Bruges squad. Its cost is estimated at 20 million euros.
Interestingly, the second in the list of the most valuable assets of the Bruges according to Transfermarkt is Emmanuel Dennis, known to Ukrainian fans for Zorya’s matches, whose value is 16 million euros. This season, however, the Nigerian has given up significantly, and after a recent scandalous story on the club bus, rumors surfaced in the press about Bruges’ readiness to sell Dennis to Sheffield United in January for just € 8 million. euros.
FC Bruges
It is necessary to highlight the “landing of Ukraine” in “Bruges”. He is represented by 25-year-old left-back Eduard Sobol, hired by the Belgians from Shakhtar. He has been involved in 17 team games this season, but it was recently reported that Club Brugge will not buy the player’s contract from the Pitmen next summer.
Euroseason statistics… Club Brugge is ranked 14th out of 32 participating teams in terms of average possession in a single Champions League game this season. The black and blue indicator is 50.8%, which is significantly higher than that of Dynamo (42.9%). Also, the Belgians are among the top 5 teams in the Champions League-2020/21 for the use of long passes in the game. With 361 long shots, Club Brugge is third behind Liverpool (400) and Ajax (366).
Matches against Dynamo. To date, the Black-Blues have only played two full-time official games against the Dynamo. They passed in the 2019/20 Champions League standings, and then the Belgians went further in the aggregate (1: 0, 3: 3), so the “blue and white” of February 2021 will have an excellent reason to “return the favor”.
MAKKABI (Israel)
Brief business card… Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club was founded in 1906, being the oldest and most titled club in its country. In total, the “yellows” have 23 victories in the Israeli championship, which is nine more titles than the “Hapoel” from Tel Aviv. The last rally of the elite division of the national league “Maccabi” Tel Aviv won with a handicap of 14 points over the second “Maccabi” from Haifa. However, in this season, things are not going so well for the ‘yellows’: at the moment they are only fifth in the draw for the regular part of the season, losing four points to leader Maccabi Haifa.
Maccabi Tel Aviv’s greatest achievement in European competition is its two Champions League group competitions in the 2004/05 and 2015/16 seasons. In the latter, the Israelis were in the same group as Chelsea, Dynamo Kiev and Porto, giving way to the three teams the way to the European Cup playoffs (the British and the Ukrainian – in the eighth of the Champions League, the Portuguese- in 1/16 of the Europa League). Furthermore, the Dynamo had no particular problems with Maccabi in two games, beating this team 2-0 away and 1-0 at home.
The Transfermarkt portal estimates the total cost of the Maccabi Tel Aviv first team players as of today at almost 19 million euros (Shakhtar, at 135 million euros).
In the football club classification, calculated on the basis of the last 5 years of performances in European competitions, Maccabi is ranked 71 (Shakhtar – 17).
I walk this season of European competition. Maccabi started the current season with the first classification of the Champions League, where in a confrontational match they were stronger than Riga (2: 0), and in the next round they beat Suduvu (3: 0). In the third round, the Israelis met another team from the post-Soviet space: Dynamo Brest, which Maccabi also beat dry (1: 0). Only in the final stage of the qualifying playoffs did the Israelis crash into the post, losing in two games to Austrian “Salzburg” (1: 2, 1: 3), and headed for the Europa League.
In the Europa League, Maccabi made their way into Group I, where they ultimately lost the front row to Villarreal, but beat Sivasspor and Karabakh. At the same time, the Israelis beat the Turkish team twice (2: 1 – away and 1: 0 – home), as well as at home they won against Karabakh (1: 0), having played the Azerbaijanis away in a tie (1: 1). “Villarrealu” the Tel Aviv team “burned” on the road (0: 4), but took the points at home (1: 1). The 11 points collected were enough for Maccabi to finish second in the group.
Maccabi’s best scorer in the current Europa League is tied striker Yonatan Cohen (2 goals in 6 games), while the best assistant is defensive midfielder Dor Peretz (3 assists in 6 games).
Head coach. Maccabi’s mentor is the Greek Georgios Donis, 51. In Israel, he only started working in August this year, replacing the “in command” of the Serbian Vladimir Ivic’s team, who went on to coach English “Watford”.
Twitter Maccabi. Georgis donis
Donis began his coaching career in 2002 at Ilisiacos. At home he worked with Larisa, AEK, Atromitos, PAOK and Panathinaikos, from whom he moved to Maccabi. He also worked in Cyprus with APOEL, in Saudi Arabia with Al-Hilal and in the United Arab Emirates with Sharjah. With “Larisa” he won the Greek Cup, with APOEL he became the champion of Cyprus, and with “Al-Hilal” he won the Saudi Arabian Super Cup, as well as the King’s Cup and the Crown Prince Cup.
In Maccabi, Tel Aviv Donis still widely uses various playing schemes, but still gives the advantage to a 4-2-3-1 formation (especially in the national championship), although in the Europa League there were variations of this scheme in almost all matches, or other formations chosen for the opponent.
Briefly about the composition… It is not easy to single out someone on the Maccabi squad, because the overwhelming majority of the players on this team have never been heard in the world of football outside of Israel.
Maccabi Tel Aviv’s most expensive footballer is Yonatan Cohen, 24 (2.4 million euros), who has 7 appearances for the Israeli team. Also noteworthy are the 28-year-old Spanish left-back Enric Saborit, who has little experience in La Liga for Athletic, his 31-year-old compatriot Luis Hernández, who plays in the center of defense and is a graduate of the Real Madrid quarry and played a bit in the Premier League with Leicester. And in La Liga for Málaga.
Also notable is 28-year-old Serbian striker Aleksandar Pesic. He moved to Maccabi in early October this year, and before that he managed to change many clubs during his career, including Atalanta (7 matches, 1 goal), Toulouse (65 matches, 8 goals) and Crvena. Estrella “(51 games, 29 goals).
Interestingly, current Shakhtar winger Manor Solomon, when playing in Israel for Maccabi Petah-Tikva, played 4 games against Maccabi Tel Aviv, scoring 1 goal and 1 assists.
Twitter Maccabi
Euroseason statistics. In the current Europa League, Maccabi Tel Aviv is ranked 42nd out of 48 teams participating in the group stage in terms of total expected goals. In six fights, the Israelis won just 5.48xG and scored 6 goals. Interestingly, in terms of average age, the “yellows” were one of the oldest teams in the tournament in the group stage: 27.9 years (44th place).
Apparently the Israeli team is good at fouling. Regarding this component, it is currently ranked 5th in the Europa League with 89 fouls committed. In addition, the yellows stood out for their quite intense passing game. In terms of assists per minute of possession (16), Maccabi finished fourth in the tournament of 48 participants in the group stage. However, on average, the yellows had possession of the ball only 44.9% of the playing time.
Matches against Shakhtar. The Tel Aviv team will play its first official matches with the Pitmen in February 2021.
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