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The coach of the Lithuanian national team, Csaba Laszlo, was not satisfied with the team's performance after losing to Macedonia.
Our country's national team lost 0-1 in a preparation match for the World Cup qualifying tournament in the city of Skopje. Goran Pandev scored the only goal in the 54th minute.
"The game wasn't bad, especially in the first 45 minutes we more or less managed to implement our plans," said Laszlo. "We tried to play compactly and bring out three attacking players quickly. However, the final pass was constantly inaccurate."
He continued: "We missed the goal due to a mistake on the left side. In the last 20 minutes, the Macedonians already had some dangerous counterattacks. I am essentially satisfied with the defense and the safe line, but we need to improve our attacking game. We need to create more opportunities and be more dangerous upfront."
Defender Edgaras Česnauskis doesn't believe that the Lithuanians deserved to lose: "It was a tough battle, the opponents were evenly matched. A draw would have been a fair result. The plus side is that we fought one after another, tried our best, understood what the coach wanted from us. We lost because we probably lacked focus in defense. One mistake determined the course of the whole match. Both teams did not create one hundred percent chances. We had half-chances, but we couldn't finish the final stage of the attack. But I think the training paid off."
Meanwhile, Marius Žaliūkas said: "We are disappointed because we couldn't win. But even a draw would have been a good result. Unfortunately, one small mistake and we lost. The opponents played well on the counterattack and we could only watch. We played well in defense, the opponents were not very aggressive, but in the last third of the field we struggled to finish attacks. We will have a camp before the qualifying cycle and the opportunity to work on that."
