Babrungas handed title advantage as Minija falter in Vilnius
Although today is not officially the birthday of the city of Plungė, Babrungas, who have spent most of the season in second place, can start rubbing their hands in jubilant anticipation. With three rounds remaining in the Pirma Lyga season [Lithuanian second tier], they have moved to the top of the league table.
Why? Because a certain team from Vilnius, led by Raimondas Vilėniškis, who only became head coach in the summer, just deservedly defeated one of the contenders for promotion to the Toplyga.
Match Analysis
Minija, who only recently played in the LFF Cup final, had absolutely no answer today to BFA’s pair of Artiom Osipovič and Daniel Misiūnas. The capital-city side made the most of their opportunities, while the light blues and whites never found a response to the style of play imposed by BFA. Led by their coaching trio, the hosts drew the visitors into a game that suited them, built around quick attacks into space behind the defence and intermittent pressing of the opposition.
Ugnius Semaška’s reliable performance in his own penalty area gave the home side confidence. He consistently came off his line to collect crosses and quickly distribute the ball to launch attacks. The wide midfielders also made a significant contribution to winning possession by pressing the opposition’s build-up play – Misiūnas, on the left, and Leonenko together with Osipovič, who came close to scoring twice, on the right.
There was virtually no attacking play down Minija’s left flank today. Runs down the right and second-half shots from outside the penalty area, around the 20-metre mark, were not enough to outsmart the hosts’ coaching trio. Alongside the aforementioned Vilėniškis, that staff includes Pavel Leus and fitness coach Dmitrij Kartašov.
After the substitutions, number 27, Sergej Amirzian, looked great and enlivened the game with his passes on the right wing, but the Minija players disappointed with their inability to convert their chances with headers and shots from outside the penalty area.
Is Gvildys Repeating Last Year’s Scenario?
Without taking anything away from the blue-and-whites, who have climbed to fifth place in the standings, Minija’s problems continue, and the situation increasingly resembles a prolonged, serious crisis.
Following their Cup final defeat, in which I had hoped to see a better performance from Minija, the form shown by this coastal-region side has been clearly disappointing. Their coach, Darius Gvildys, faces some difficult weeks if he is to avoid another collapse like the one he experienced last year while managing Tauras of Tauragė.
At that time, Tauras were among the league leaders but, at roughly the same stage of the season as now, squandered their advantage and allowed Klaipėda’s Neptūnas to move ahead. Neptūnas eventually finished second.
The coach’s statement that “we need to remain a team” means nothing. The priority must be to improve their football, climb out of this slump and overcome the crisis. With defending like this, their chances of reaching the Topyga through the play-offs against Šiauliai are minimal.
Assessment of BFA
Overall, BFA delivered a genuinely solid performance. The ball moved well between the different areas of the team, and it was clear that the players were physically well prepared. They quite literally outran their opponents and showed a greater desire to win.
Vilėniškis, who replaced the previous coach, Musleras, in the summer, still needs to find some way to improve the coordination of his defenders if everything is to fall into place. Their handling of second balls, particularly aerial situations inside their own penalty area, remains unconvincing. There were frequent moments when the ball was hanging in the air, but Minija’s physically much stronger foreign players were almost always the first to reach it.
This merely underlines the fact that BFA’s weakest department is their defence, which ranks fifth from bottom in the league. Against opponents with greater quality and more clinical finishing, allowing this much space at times would leave Semaška picking the ball out of his net not once, but at least three or four times.
Despite the criticism of BFA’s defence, it is encouraging to see that local Vilnius youngsters are being given a genuine opportunity to play at one of Lithuania’s best academies. Today, as many as nine Lithuanians started for the home side, compared with five for the visitors. This once again demonstrates that, when given the chance, Lithuanian players can perform just as well as foreigners. Many Lithuanian midfielders would envy a free-kick like the one scored today by Misiūnas, who has been playing in Vilnius for three and a half seasons.
Perhaps Arvydas Novikovas would be an exception. He probably gave a few lessons last year while playing alongside Misiūnas at BFA. The latter, now one of the blue-and-whites’ leaders, gave himself a present on the eve of his birthday.
Referee
It is good to see the development of referee Irmantas Kaprašovas. He allowed the game to flow and read situations very well, avoiding unnecessary stoppages when a verbal warning was sufficient. He also kept Minija’s players in check when their frustration at their own helplessness began to show in the second half.
It was good that he managed to avoid showing a second yellow card to former Šiauliai and Nomme Kalju Estonian midfielder Nikita Komissarov, who spent much of the match talking and complaining to the referee, thereby putting pressure on him. Such a decision might have changed the course of the match and provoked Gvildys’s anger, but the referee chose not to react to those remarks. Perhaps that was for the best, because, as they say – if you listened to everything everyone said, there would be no time left to actually play football.
Stadium
Say what you like, but there is still no snow or sleet, and today’s weather was absolutely fantastic. Yet the match was played inside an indoor arena.
Was this simply to save money? Why couldn’t the home side play, for example, at Vingis Park Stadium? The former Pedagoginis Stadium or Saulėtekis Stadium would also be theoretically possible alternatives.
Fresh air and grass – what more could footballers need?
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