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On Sunday at 18:00, "Banga" from Gargždai will meet with "Tauras" from Tauragė.
Tauragė's "Tauras" can be called a club that has undergone the most changes during the off-season. The team bid farewell not only to last season's leaders - G.Jerkovič, R.Seedorf, M.Soares, L.Savastu, V.Lukša, K.Gnedojum, M.Stanaičius, D.Arlauskis, but also to the coach G.Jarmalavičius who led the team for two years.
Together with Giovanni Scanu, who has worked in the regional leagues of Italy, invited to be the head coach of "Tauras," a whole group of Italians joined the team - forwards Manuel Perra and Michele Di Piedi, midfielders Giampietro Demurta and Alessandro Mascia. The defense was strengthened by the Argentine Leonardo Vela. Two more foreign players arrived from neighboring countries - defender Roman Kuzin from Russia and defender Aleksandrs Solovjovs from Latvia.
After the break, several players who have already played for "Tauras" returned - defender Mantas Lėkis who missed a season, midfielder Tomas Vyšniauskas who played for "Atlantas" and "Banga" last season, defender Marius Kižys who had a contract with the Russian club Nižnij Novgorod, and defender Tomas Rimas who played briefly for "Banga" in 2008. Tauragė borrowed defender Robertas Freidgeimas from "Žalgiris."
From last year's main team composition players, "Tauras" managed to keep goalkeeper Oleksandr Borysenko, defender Tomas Sirevičius, midfielder Vladas Petkevičius and several young players from Tauragė.
In the 2012 season, "Tauras" is not shining. Like "Banga," Tauragė only collected points in two matches. However, unlike our team, "Tauras" managed to supplement the points piggy bank more solidly - they won two games. Both wins - against REO and "Šiauliai" - were achieved with a minimal difference (1:0), scoring winning goals at the end of the match. These two matches were the only ones in which "Tauras" did not concede goals. Whenever a goal fell into the Tauragė team's net, it almost automatically meant defeat - 0:1 against "Kruoja," 1:4 against "Sūduva," 0:5 against "Ekranas," 0:2 against "Žalgiris," and 2:4 against "Dainava."
Head-to-head meetings. Last season, all three head-to-head matches took place in Gargždai, as "Tauras" also chose our city stadium for their home matches. One match ended in a draw (1:1), while the teams shared a win each - in June, "Banga" won 3:0, and in September, "Tauras" got their revenge (0:1). In total, since 1990, Gargždai and Tauragė have played 31 official matches against each other. A slight advantage is on "Banga's" side - our team won 12 matches, "Tauras" won 11, and 8 matches ended in a draw. The goal difference favors Gargždai - 50:33.
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In the match against "Tauras," "Banga" will have to manage without their team captain Andrius Jokšas. The experienced defender has accumulated four yellow cards in seven matches and is forced to miss one game.
Due to injury, Armando Dos Santos is still unable to play.
The reserves will test their strength on Monday at 17:00 in Tauragė.
