I'll start things off with Borussia Mönchengladbach vs Dynamo Kiev in the final qualifying round of Champions League.
Gladbach were the surprise 4th-place finishers in the Bundesliga last season, with new manager Lucien Favre creating an exciting quick counter-attacking team that was either leading or sitting in 2nd place for most of the season, but ran out of steam and settled for 4th in the end - still a great result for a team that needed to win a play-off match to stave off relegation the season earlier. They were forced to sell their best player, Marco Reus, to Dortmund this summer, but signed 2nd-best scorer of the Dutch league in Luuk de Jong as a direct replacement.
Dynamo finished 2nd to Shakhtar in the Ukrainian League. Dynamo and Shakhtar always occupy the first 2 positions in the table, with all the other teams way back - people say Ukrainian football is like Scottish football in that it's completely dominated by two teams. For Dynamo the main source of pride (and a big selling point in order to attract good foreign players) are their regular participation and some notable accomplishments in the Champions League - although any significant accomplishments, such as reaching the semi-final of the CL or beating Barcelona 3:0 home and 4:0 away are all more than a decade old. Dynamo failed to qualify for CL for a couple of years in a row now and that began to threaten the whole business model. Dynamo's owner and president Surkis invested heavily in new players this summer, desperate to return the team to CL. New players include deep-lying playmaker Miguel Veloso from Genoa, attacking midfielder Nico Krancar from Tottenham (a long-time target for Dynamo, they followed him since he was a youngster in Croatia), fullback Taye Taiwo on loan from AC Milan (Dynamo and Milan are still on friendly terms, thanks to Shevchenko), striker Ruben from Villareal and brazilian forward Raffael from Hertha Berlin.
I am not going to describe the game in detail here - there are descriptions and highlights available elsewhere for those who are interested. In the end, Dynamo won 3:1 in this away game and all but booked the long-awaited trip to CL group stage. Gladbach looked more lively and attack-minded then Dynamo, especially in the beginning of the game, before the goals knocked the stuffing out of them a bit, but they were undone by their lack of experience in the European competitions. Another factor was a nightmare performance by new signing Luuk de Jong - he looked distinctly off pace and messed up everything he touched in attack and capped the night with an own goal. It's too early to judge the player after one game, but on this display I'm sure glad we didn't buy into the Luuk hype. Two of Dynamo's goals were somewhat lucky (a deflected long-range shot from CB Mikhalik and an own goal), but in between them, Yarmolenko scored a goal of real quality. A few notes on other notable players: Miguel Veloso is an instant hit with Dynamo - looks very much Xabi Alonso-esque, Krancar was decent but not spectacular and Taiwo looks like he cannot defend if his life depended on it - poor concentration and no positional awareness. Ruben and Raffael didn't feature.
