When FK Panevėžys stunned Hegelmann Kaunas in the Lithuanian Cup final, many neutrals saw only the scoreline and the spectacle of a bicycle kick that will live long in club folklore. But for Roland Vrabec, the German coach who only took charge this year, the victory meant something altogether deeper: proof that a risky move into the footballing unknown could pay off with silverware and a ticket to Europe. Days after the final, the emotions were still raw. “It feels like it was just an hour ago,” he admitted. “I’m still overwhelmed with all the feelings, great feelings after this win.”
The setting makes the story more improbable. Panevėžys is neither a capital city powerhouse nor a long-standing club. It is a modest northern town with a neat centre, a place where life runs at a gentler rhythm than the sprawling metropolis of Frankfurt where Vrabec grew up. “Of course, it’s a huge difference,” he said. Yet smallness does not faze him. His career has already taken him to Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and outposts far removed from the spotlight of the Bundesliga. For him, the size of the town fades when the work begins. Training ground, gym, preparation—these form the coordinates of daily life, not shopping streets or boulevards. “Most of the time I’m focused on the job. You need to rest between sessions, to prepare. Of course I go into the city, but mostly I work. That’s what I came here for.”
The decision to come at all was not straightforward. Vrabec had been six months without work, weighing offers but waiting for the right one. When Panevėžys approached through an agent, he did his homework: research on the league, phone calls to former Panevėžys coach Gino Lettieri, long conversations with his family about whether such a move would make sense. Friends in Germany were baffled. Beyond Žalgiris, the Lithuanian league was an enigma to them. “Nobody knew about the club,” he smiled. But the challenge appealed. It meant stepping into the unknown, and that, to Vrabec, was part of the appeal. “It can be the best experience, or a bad one. You don’t know until you try.”
When he arrived, he found not a champion basking in success, but a club bruised and anxious. The title season had been followed by a collapse: key players leaving, injuries piling up, the demands of European qualifiers overwhelming a thin squad. Suddenly Panevėžys had gone from champions to strugglers, fighting simply to survive. “It was not a unit,” Vrabec recalled. “Normally you come and there’s a base. This time it was a completely new team.” Foreign players were parachuted in, still adjusting not just to Lithuanian football but to life in a smaller league. Early results showed the fragility. Losses mounted, points slipped away, confidence eroded. The task was not glamorous: stabilise, avoid the panic of another relegation fight, and if the chance appeared, chase Europe.
Through the long season, he found small gains. A group of 16 to 18 players slowly crystallised as reliable, the tactical structure began to hold, and while inconsistencies remained, the club moved away from crisis. The league campaign ended in mid-table, modest but safe. By itself, that might have been enough to mark progress. But the Cup transformed the narrative entirely.
If the league demanded patience, the Cup was a theatre for daring. Against Hegelmann, Vrabec prepared with forensic detail. He identified where Panevėžys might hurt them: in the back line, where tall central defenders preferred aerial battles to footraces. “They don’t like sprinting duels,” he explained. To exploit this, he designed a pattern: bypass Hegelmann’s pressing triggers, use midfield pivots to draw opponents out, and then launch runners diagonally behind the defence. Lucas de Vega and Isaac Asante became the heartbeat of the plan, always showing for the ball, always prepared to drop and shift the opposition midfield. Once the gaps opened, the front players attacked the spaces with speed and variety—sometimes straight down the wing, sometimes cutting in at diagonals that confused the marking responsibilities.
The effect was clear from the outset. For the opening twenty minutes Panevėžys not only resisted but imposed themselves, creating three gilt-edged chances. “Smith should have scored already,” Vrabec lamented with a coach’s perfectionism. Still, the plan was working. Hegelmann were cautious, wary of overcommitting, almost playing with the weight of expectation rather than freedom.
As the second half progressed, fatigue gnawed at Panevėžys. From the touchline, Vrabec saw two or three key men labouring. He feared the balance was tipping back toward the favourites. And then came the moment—an acrobatic bicycle kick, struck with audacity and precision. It was not just a goal; it was a psychological thunderclap. Hegelmann, already scarred by two previous Cup final defeats, looked stunned. “They were almost shocked,” Vrabec observed. “They couldn’t believe it was happening again.”
From there, it was about resolve. Panevėžys closed ranks, defended with discipline, and forced Hegelmann into frustration rather than fluency. The tactical plan, rooted in identifying small cracks and exploiting them ruthlessly, had been vindicated. But as much as the analysis, it was the psychology that mattered: Panevėžys had arrived with belief, while Hegelmann carried the burden of expectation. “We didn’t go there to just take part. We went to win.”
The Cup, then, became more than silverware. It was proof of hard work with a team rebuilt after a disastrous season and featuring many new arrivals. For Panevėžys, it delivered European football once again and a sense of restored pride after a year of turbulence. For Vrabec, it confirmed that sometimes the risky path, the unfamiliar town, the league nobody in Western Europe notices, can become the setting for the most resonant victories. “We completed the mission in a really, really good way,” he reflected, with understatement that scarcely covered the scale of the turnaround.
Panevėžys is unlikely to rival Frankfurt in size or fame, but on the pitch, on that rainy Cup final day in Jonava, it staged a story that reverberated far beyond its borders. And for a German coach who dared to take the road less traveled, it offered a reminder that in football, as in life, the biggest rewards often lie where few think to look.
