Pastir is an idiot. What do you want to know? How much better Lithuania is than any other Former Soviet team? EDIT: MODS! MOVE THIS TO THE FSU BOARDS!
FSU is "Former Soviet Union" Well, the Lithuanian A Lyga is a 2nd or 3rd rate league that has been dominated by FBK Kaunas since the fall of the Soviet Union. Ekranas Panevėžys won in 2005 but throuought the A Lyga's history it has been mostly Kaunas. It starts in April like the MLS because Lithuania is cold as all hell in the winter. About the Lithuanian national team now. They have a very solid defense and play a 5-4-1. Their offense is not that strong with their brightest star being Edgaras Jankauskas, who plays for Heart of Midlothian in the Scottish Premier League. Our keeper, Zydrunas Karcemarskas is a bit underrated in my opinion, and is extremely fun to watch. The guy is an animal. We have a bunch of players playing for Hearts because the team is owned by a Lithuanian billionaire. midfielders at hearts: Saulius Mikoliunas Marius Zaliukas Deividas Cesnauskis defenders at hearts: Nerijus Barasa forwards at hearts: Edgaras Jankauskas We have a couple players playing in Italy which is probably one of our biggest accomplishments. One of our forwards, Tomas Danilevicius, plays for Livorno. He is pretty talented and might be our number 1 striker after the 2010 world cup if not sooner. Marius Stankevicius, one of our defenders plays for Brescia. He is definitely the best on the back line. We have 3 players playing in the Russian Superleague, which is also a big accomplishment IMHO, Rolandas Džiaukštas, a defender plays for Saturn FC Moscow Oblast Andrius Skerla, also is a defender and plays for Tom Tomsk. Midfielder Deividas Semberas plays for CSKA Moscow Forward Robertas Poskus plays for Dinamo Moscow. So we definitely have our players in the right places regarding competition. I dont think we are World Cup material yet, but we have competed with some of the best teams in the World in recent competition. During World Cup Quaifying, we tied Spain in Lithuania, and we narrowly lost to them 1-0. (We had a goal disallowed that was very obviously in. I think the call was biased.) We just tied Italy in the fall 1-1 in qualifying for Euro 2008. In a friendly right before the World Cup, we beat our rivals Poland 1-0 in their warm up match for the cup. Lithuania is very much in the mix in their Euro 2008 group, but it is a very tough group with Italy, France, and Ukraine in it. They will have to make a couple steals to make the tournament, but it is still good that they are exposed to this competition. They could be a powerful team in Eastern Europe like Russia and Ukraine very soon.
Excellent info. How is the national team? Does make sense to put this in FSU. Are you Lithuanian by any chance?
I put it in there, I just forgot to add it, so i edited the same post. Some of my family is from Lithuania, and I am very proud to be an American that still cheers for them. Italy on my mom's side, Lithuania on my dads. Its a good combination.....unless they play each other.
wow, this is good stuff. my family's half Lithuanian and I had no idea that they had high level football talent. you'd think they'd make more of an impact national-team-wise with so many players at that level.
The reason they dont is that they are so defensively oriented that it hinders the chances for wins. A lot of draws. Also, the fact that alot of Eastern Euro nations are just more stacked than them.
List of Lithuanians at Hearts: Marius Zaliukas Deividas Cesnauskis Nerijus Barasa Edgaras Jankauskas Linas Pilibaitis Tomas Kancelskis Saulius Mikoliunas Kestutis Ivaskevicius Andrius Velicka Eduardas Kurskis They almost have a full team now, although not many of are in the starting 11, whatever Romanov decides to pick from week-to-week. 2 of them joined today. How many are actually rated highly in Lithuania?
All regular National Team Starters: Jankauskas Mikoliunas Velicka Barasa Cesnauskis I also believe Kurskis has made a couple appearances with the national team.
Hearts owned by a "Lithuanian banker" I read. With a name like "Vladimir Romanov", this is a Russian name not Lithuanian. It is outrageous to suggest otherwise. Maybe his is Jewish also? Definately not Lithuanian. He might have picked up a passport through some kind of corrupt beaureaucrat in Kaunas, but no way on earth he is Lithuanian. This should be investigated by the authorities now that Lithuania is a respectable nation and not a pariah state, like Russia where rule of law is actually enforced. A real Lithuanian is Roman Catholic, so he would have purchased Hibernian or Celtic not a protestant club such as Hearts. Anyhow in the old days(when Lithuania was a free and prosperous nation before the ugly neighbours decided to overstay their welcome), football as well as hunting were the more popular sports before basketball came along in the 1930s when Lithuanian teams stomped all over Europe. The rest is history. Maybe if the team becomes successful soccer will become bigger. But due to the small population, small local league and most of all Arctic temperatures, outdoor sports have limited potential. A Pan Baltic/Scandinavian league with the largest cities fielding composite clubs might make football a larger interest sport. Say Helsinki, Riga, Vilnius, Kaunas, Siauliai, Klaipeda, Tallin, as an example. FIFA rules currently make it hard to create a league across borders. It would be the only way to create the economies of scale to make it possible to get large crowds, tv interest and good players. Maybe one day, Lithuania and the region are certainly becoming wealthier at an incredible rate(unlike Russia which is sinking further in the mess they created for themselves!).
You are thinking way too deeply into this. Romanov, love him or hate him, has helped the Lithuanian NT greatly by giving them much tougher competition and helping a bunch of them play on the same team to keep that cohesion. I dont give a damn where he put the players, as long as they get good competition and get better.
Damn. The Baltics have to pick up the whole rigging corporate television a little better that Western Europe and the Americas have done so well.
You can watch Western European TV as well as US TV rather easily on the internet, whether it is torrents or just feeds. Ive never seen a Lithuanian game online.
Really great that Baltic states were finally able to come on terms and found this exciting league, which hopefully will help to hasten football development and popularity (especially in Lithuania ). Currently Latvian teams seem to be gaining upper hand (excluding Dinaburg which was disqualified for cheating - truly deserved it) as they are generally richer and able to afford better foreigners and their infrastructure is also better. (of course not in all cases but generally). Though personally I think that Lithuania has the most potential in terms of homegrown talent in future, so lets wait and see.
some downloads: Vetra - FC Vilnius: http://www.4shared.com/dir/2650524/a6ab33b7 FBK Kaunas - Ekranas: http://www.sport-scene.net/details.php?id=190 Lithuania - France: http://www.sport-scene.net/details.php?id=267