FC STUMBRAS (Darius and Girėnas Stadium)

A LYGA, FC STUMBRAS 1-0 FK TRAKAI, ATTENDANCE: 100

After our adventures in Kaliningrad and Gdansk the party of seven had dwindled down to just two and we decided to cross the border in Lithuania for some A Lyga action.

There are no trains from Poland to Lithuania on a Monday to Thursday so it was a choice of either nine hours on a bus or an early start and a few hours on a plane, via Stockholm, for just a few Euro's more. We took the latter option and were in Vilnius in time for a liquid lunch and to enjoy some World Cup games on the TV.

From Vilnius it was a train west to the city of Kaunas for the the first game of a midweek double header. The 105km train journey took around 90 minutes from Vilnius and we treated ourselves to a first class seat, in an air conditioned carriage and with free wi-fi for 6 euros. Once again our European friends make a mockery of our transport system.

The National Football Academy of Lithuania was set up in 2006 as a training academy for the best players in the country. In 2013 the NFA set up a team to enter the league system and called itself FC Stumbras. The players were mostly youth players but experience was added as the club progressed up the leagues.

The club reached the A Lyga in 2015 after winning the I Lyga title in 2014. Stumbras finished in their highest ever position of 6th in 2016 but last season they had to win a relegation play-off (they beat FK Banga Gargždai 5-1 on aggregate) to remain in the A-Lyga. However in 2017 the club beat FK Žalgiris 1-0 to lift the Lithuanian League Cup, so the club will play in the Europa League for the first time this year.

Stumbras were hosting FK Trakai this evening and there was some Evertonian interest as, amongst their squad, Trakai boast the former Toffee's winger Diniyar Bilyaletdinov. The Russian was a peripheral figure at Goodison making 77 appearances, 29 of which were from the bench, but he did score a couple of cracking goals in his time on Merseyside. He did start the game tonight but was largely anonymous before eventually hobbling off injured after 35 minutes.

There was also some Welsh interest as Trakai will also be travelling to North Wales, well England to be more precise, next week as they have been drawn against Cefn Druids in the Europa League, but the first leg will be played at Park Hall in Oswestry. After watching Trakai tonight I would say The Ancients have a chance as nothing I witnessed would especially worry me, but as is usual it will probably be the match fitness/sharpness that will be the difference. That's what normally does for Welsh teams at this stage of competition.

I was sat next to a lad from Lithuania at the game in Kaliningrad and he had warned the standard of football in the A Lyga was not great and the game tonight did nothing to convince me he was wrong. It was a poor, poor game in all honesty. 

The match was settled in favour of the home side with a strike from Brazillian Marcos Soares Jr. after 32 minutes, when he fired home after latching onto a defence splitting pass from Jardel Nazarene (click here). The home side had a few chances to make the game safe in the second half, and nearly paid for thoses misses as Trakai went close late on, but the game ended 1-0.

Originally built in 1925, The Darius and Girėnas Stadium (named after the Lithuanian pilots Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas who died in a crash near the end of an attempted non-stop flight from New York to Lithuania) is a brutal concrete communist athletics stadium, typical of its era. The ground was upgraded to UEFA standards in 1998.

Next month the ground is due to be demolished and rebuilt, when it will be fully enclosed and the seating areas covered, with a capacity of around 15,000. Hopefully the new ticket office within the stadium will be an office rather than the seat of a car and hopefully there will be a refreshment kiosk as, on a very warm evening, there was nothing on sale at the ground.

There was certainly no need for 15,000 seats tonight as the crowd just about reached 100 and quite a few of them were groundhoppers from Germany and Switzerland.

Pre-match was spent in the fabulous Hop Doc with plenty of local beers to get through but, football and beer aside, the city of Kaunas is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Lithuania.

 Tickets please!