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On Saturday, the Lithuanian national youth football team under 19 started the European youth championship. In the matches held in Kaunas, Lithuanians lost 2:3 to the Dutch team after a dramatic battle.
The national team coach Antanas Vingilys expressed regret after the match that the youngsters started the game timidly, but emphasized that being so close to a draw could have mixed things up for other teams in the group.
Antanas Vingilys' comment:
"What everyone feared, happened. The start of the competition and great excitement. Everything led to us making childish mistakes. Of course, the opponent was very strong and if we had played evenly, we would have had a positive result.
In the second half, Lukas Spalvis, who joined the team only yesterday arriving from Georgia, was substituted. He lacked rest, so he strained his legs.
I think we will deal with demoralization. I don't know why such mistakes were made on the left side, Lukas Čerkauskas just couldn't handle the situation. It was not his best performance, although he is really promising.
I think all three teams in the group are equally matched. If we had played evenly, we would have mixed things up for everyone. Today we didn't have many opportunities, but we utilized the ones we had well.
We had analyzed the competitors well, so we chose the right tactics, which resulted in the best possible outcome. It's a pity we missed a goal in the last minute. We knew how we could score – and we tried to do it. We played according to the plan, unfortunately not everything worked out. According to the plan, we were supposed to score a third goal from a set piece."
Immediately after the match, Antanas Vingilys jokingly complained about the referees adding six extra minutes to the main time, but later said that the referees did what they had to do.
