Roma hope to finish job in Kiev

AS Roma travel to FC Dynamo Kyiv looking for the victory that would guarantee them a place in the UEFA Champions League first knockout round. The Giallorossi sit second in Group F and have the luxury of knowing they could secure a top-two finish even without winning, so long as third-placed Sporting Clube de Portugal do not achieve a better result from their visit to Manchester United FC.

• For the group's bottom team, Dynamo, there remains the faint possibility of closing the four-point gap on Sporting and securing a UEFA Cup spot. The first priority for Oleh Luzhny's charges, however, will be just to get some points on the board after a campaign which has thus far brought nothing but disappointment.

• Dynamo's elimination was confirmed on Matchday 4 when they lost 4-0 at United in Luzhny's first game in charge as caretaker coach after replacing József Szabó. Gerard Piqué, Carlos Tévez, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney scored the goals that left Dynamo one of only three sides still without a point in the group stage.

• Dynamo started their Group F campaign with a 2-0 defeat at Roma where Simone Perrotta and Francesco Totti found the net for the Serie A side. By the time Matchday 2 came round, Szabó had replaced Anatoliy Demyanenko as coach but things got no better: Dynamo lost 2-1 at home to Sporting Clube de Portugal – Vladyslav Vaschuk's effort sandwiched by strikes from Tonel and Anderson Polga – and they then went down 4-2 against United at the NSC Olympiyskiy Stadium on Matchday 3.

• The Ukrainian champions trailed 2-0 after 18 minutes against United and although Diogo Rincón narrowed the deficit in the 34th minute, the visitors were 4-1 up by the time Ismaël Bangoura struck a late second for his team.

• Roma owe their position of relative strength in Group F to the four points they gained from their double-header with Sporting. After losing 1-0 at United on Matchday 2, they got back to winning ways by beating Sporting 2-1 in Rome where Juan (15 minutes) and Mirko Vučinić (70) struck either side of Liedson's effort (18) for the visitors.

• Roma rode their luck in the Lisbon return as Polga's 90th-minute own goal earned them a 2-2 draw. After leading through Marco Cassetti's early goal (4), Luciano Spalletti's team had fallen behind through two Liedson strikes (22, 64) prior to their last-gasp reprieve.

• Dynamo have not advanced beyond the first group stage since 1999/00 and have not won any of their last eleven matches in the UEFA Champions League – losing nine of them.

• Dynamo's last victory in the competition was actually against Roma on 23 November 2004 when a Traianos Dellas own goal and Maksim Shatskikh strike secured a 2-0 home success.

• The teams that evening were:
Dynamo Kyiv: Olexandr Shovkovskiy, Tiberiu Ghioane, Goran Gavrančić, Badr El Kaddouri, Goran Sablic, Andriy Husin, Oleh Gusev, Ayila Yussuf, Diogo Rincón, Kleber, Maris Verpakovskis.
Roma: Ivan Pelizzoli, Giuseppe Scurto, Traianos Dellas, Matteo Ferrari, Luigi Sartor, Alberto Aquilani, Simone Perrotta, Vincent Candela, Antonio Cassano, Mido, Daniele Corvia.

• Besides that defeat, Roma also lost on their one other visit to Ukraine, going down 1-0 at FC Shakhtar Donetsk in a group stage fixture on 22 November last year.

• Dynamo's 2004 victory against Roma was their first in seven attempts at home against Italian opposition. The previous six matches had yielded two draws and four defeats.

• This fixture comes five years to the day since Luzhny played in an Arsenal FC side that won 3-1 at Roma in a second group stage match. Totti and Christian Panucci were in the home ranks that evening.

• Roma's Perrotta, Panucci and Aquilani lined up against Dynamo's Shovkovskiy, Gusev and Artem Milevskiy in Italy's 2-1 win in Kiev in a UEFA EURO 2008™ qualifying match on 12 September.