Today in the small Maltese town of Paola, at the Tony Bezzina Stadium, the players of Kyiv’s Dynamo will play a European Cup match for the first time in history against a Maltese opponent — the club Hamrun Spartans. This is the first match of the second round of Champions League qualification, which will start at 20:00 Kyiv time.
In the first round of qualification, Hamrun Spartans unexpectedly eliminated the Lithuanian Zalgiris from the tournament bracket — after a 0:2 defeat away, the Maltese took revenge at home with the same score, and then won in a penalty shootout — 11:10.
Dynamo’s opponent has a long history. The club from Hamrun was founded in 1907 and has won the Maltese Championship 11 times (the first time in 1914, the last time in 2025).
Dynamo will become the fourth Ukrainian club to face a Maltese opponent in European competitions.
Chornomorets (1995), Shakhtar (1998), and Zaporizhzhia Metaluhr (2002) had no issues with their opponents. In six matches, Ukrainian teams achieved five victories with a total score of 16:3, and only one encounter ended in a draw — 0:0.