Estonia Women’s national team arrived in Riga and will face Lithuania in the opening game of the Baltic Cup 2024. The defending champions will look to retain the title won two years prior.
The two co-managers, Sirje Kapper and Anastassia Morkovkina, called up 23 players for this campaign but Estonia will have to make do without strikers Getter Saar (Flora), Emma Treiberg (Saku Sporting) and Sandra Pärn (JK Tabasalu) as well as defender Helina Tarkmeel (Flora), none of whom are available due to injuries.
Estonia go into the Baltic Cup aiming to retain the title they won in 2022 and Sirje Kapper is adamant that they have what it takes to repeat that success:
We want to show that the title still belongs to us. The tournament is also good preparation for the Nations League games in February. Hopefully, we can put together a nice end to the year
As such, Baltic Cup is one of the oldest, still-running international competitions in the world, with Women’s Baltic Cup being contested since 1996. Much like in the men’s competition, recent years saw a change in format, where, to ease the fixtures a guest nation is invited to participate. For Women’s Baltic Cup, Faroe Islands have been the sole guest nation to be invited before and will also join the competition for this edition of the Baltic Cup, making their four appearance since 2016, when they also won the tournament for the first and only time. The format of the tournament will see both semi-finals played on Thursday, with the winners meeting in the final and the losers playing each other for third place.
In 2022, Estonia beat Lithuania 4-1 in the semi-finals before claiming the trophy for the eleventh time thanks to a 3-1 win over the Faeroes in the final. At 11 titles, Estonia are convincing leaders among the Baltic states, with Latvia and Lithuania winning the Baltic Cup 5 times each.