Having advanced past Riga and Suduva Maccabi faces its next hurdle (Wednesday, 20:00) in Europe. Dynamo Brest travel to Tel Aviv for a Champions League third qualifying round, just before they arrive this is the time to get to know them in detail.
Dynamo Brest reach this season as the champions of Belarus after completing what seemed to be impossible by winning the league title for the first time in their history, thus ending a 13-year-long reign of Bate Borisov.
How do they currently fair in the league?
Just like Maccabi’s previous opponents Riga and Suduva, the Belarussian side are in the middle of their domestic season. Brest played 21 league matches so far but are currently ranked 9th in the table with 10 wins, 2 draws and 9 defeats as well as two matches on hand. They travel to Israel on the back of a dramatic 4-2 victory over Dynamo Minsk at the weekend with the score tied at 2-2 until the 89th minute.
In Europe however, the Belarussians advanced to the third round at the expense of Kazakhstan champions Astana (6-3) and Sarajevo of Bosnia (2-1). Last season they were eliminated in the Europa League third qualifying round by Cypriot outfit Apollon Limassol.
Dynamo Kiev former players
The squad of Brest consists mostly of Belarussian players, but the two leading names on their roster are actually Ukrainian. Artem Milvskiy, who made his name at Dynamo Kiev between 2002-2013 and Ukraine for which he made 50 international appearances, returned for a second spell at Brest, as the 35 year-old towering striker played for the Belarus side in the 2017-18 season.
At the back plays 33-year-old Yevhen Khacheridi who made 51 appearances for the Ukrainian national team and 150 appearances for Kiev between 2008-2018 joined Brest last season from PAOK.
Senegalese striker Abdoulaye Diallo is another threat upfront as the in form 24-year-old scored twice against Astana, added a goal against Sarajevo and completed a hattrick against Minsk at the weekend.
The counterpart of Georgios Donis will be 46-year-old Sergey Kovalchuk, a former Belarussian player who spent most of his playing at various clubs in Brest. In 1996 he joined Dinamo where he played until his retirement in 2004 when he took up several coaching positions. He was appointed as Head Coach at the start of the 2020/21 season.
