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On Tuesday, August 31, in Vilnius, the Lithuanian national and youth football teams gathered and began a training camp before their trip to Belgium, where the first qualifying matches will be played.
The team lists were announced here a week ago, and now there have already been some changes in the lineup: in place of Aurimas Kucys from "Ekranas", who suffered an injury during the Lithuanian championship matches, "Vetra" defender Gediminas Butrimavicius was called up, and recently returned Igoris Morinas from "Zalgiris" will also join the team.
Before the first training session at the "Zalgiris" stadium, a press conference was held with the participation of the LFF President Liutauras Varanavicius and the head coach of the national team Algimantas Liubinskas.
According to L. Varanavicius, both the national and youth teams are currently well assembled, although the national team is quite young and is still trying out different lineups.
"LFF hopes that the assembled team will have a stable lineup by the middle of next year, and the main goal is to aim for victory in every match. These are the biggest tasks and in the group we could not set any other task than to aim to take second place. In friendly matches in Belarus and Moscow, beautiful football was played. The team has found its game, the men are determined to fight seriously. We cannot say that the opponents are dangerous. Also, I want to inform - LFF has signed an agreement regarding the broadcasting rights of all television matches. Therefore, we hope that viewers will be able to watch all national team matches," said L. Varanavicius.
Meanwhile, A. Liubinskas tried to persuade goalkeeper Gintaras Stauch to stay with the team for at least this year, as the latter thinks it is time to give his place to younger players.
The head coach of the national team also promised to play attacking football in the match against Belgium: "We decided with the team that their personal problems will be left behind after the competition. Belgians have good attackers, so our goal in the match against them will not only be to defend but to score a goal, or even two. There will be many attackers on the field in the match against the Belgians, we changed the game tactics - no matter how much we defended in previous matches, we conceded goals. The goal in the game will be to score goals. The path to success is not to lose. Therefore, in the first matches, we will focus heavily on attacks."
The national team will continue training today and will depart to Belgium tomorrow (Thursday). The youth teams of both countries will meet on September 3 in Westelro, while the national teams will play on September 4 in the city of Charleroi.
