Shakhtar Donetsk vs Barcelona Match Stats Preview

Shakhtar Donetsk vs Barcelona Match Stats Preview

Shakhtar Donetsk have lost five of their seven UEFA Champions League games against Barcelona (W2) – it is their joint most defeats against a team in the competition, along with Real Madrid.

Barcelona have won their last four European matches against Shakhtar Donetsk (one in the Super Cup, three in the UEFA Champions League). They are looking to beat them twice in a Champions League group stage for the first time.

In the first half of their 2-1 defeat to Barcelona on MD3, Shakhtar mustered just one shot with an xG of just 0.03 and had only two touches in Barcelona’s box. In the second half, they had 10 efforts at goal (0.9 xG) and 12 touches in their box. It was the most shots Barcelona had faced in a single half of Champions League football on home soil since September 2021 (12 in second half vs Bayern Munich).

Barcelona have won their opening three UEFA Champions League games this season – they have only won their first four group games in two seasons, doing so in 2002-03 and 2020-21.

After losing three consecutive away games in the UEFA Champions League between December 2021 and October 2022, Barcelona have won each of their last two. Dating back to the start of the 2015-16 campaign, they have only had a run of three consecutive away victories once in this period in the competition (three in 2020-21 under Ronald Koeman).

Shakhtar Donetsk are winless in their last seven home games in the UEFA Champions League (D4 L3), losing each of the last two. They haven’t lost three consecutive home games in the competition since between 2007 and 2008, in a run of four under Mircea Lucescu.

This match will be played at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg, Germany. Barcelona have only faced a non-German team in a game played in Germany once before, beating Juventus 3-1 in the 2015 UEFA Champions League final in Berlin.

Should he score in this game, Shakhtar’s Heorhii Sudakov could become the second youngest Ukrainian player to score in consecutive UEFA Champions League appearances (21 years, 67 days), behind only Andriy Shevchenko in 1997 for Dynamo Kyiv (21 years, 2 days).

Barcelona’s Ferran Torres has been involved in seven goals in eight UEFA Champions League appearances for the club (5 goals, 2 assists), despite only starting two of those games. Among players to play at least 250 minutes for them in the competition, Torres has the best minutes per goal of any Barcelona player (one every 70 minutes).

Gavi has completed 94% of his passes under pressure in the UEFA Champions League this season (49/52), the highest accuracy of any Barcelona player to have attempted 50+ under pressure.