Lithuanian football players started the fight for survival in the League of Nations with a difficult victory against Gibraltar

Edgars Jankauskas’ students beat the humble Gibraltar national team 1:0 (0:0) on the road.

The match was played in the Algarve region of Portugal, as Gibraltar do not have a stadium that meets UEFA standards, most of their players work in various normal jobs. On March 26, the return match will take place in Kaunas, after which it will be determined which team will remain in the C division, and which will fall to the D division. Until this time, Lithuania had not yet been relegated.

Already in the 26th minute of the match, Gibraltar lost its main goalkeeper, who rudely stopped Fyodor Chernych and saw a red card.

After the break, Gvidas Gineitis started to break the ice, hitting the crossbar, and soon Armandas Kučys, who appeared on the field after the substitution, put Lithuania ahead with a header in the 60th minute.

For the 21-year-old Kaunas Žalgiris striker, this is the first goal in the national team.

69 min. the advantage was almost doubled by F. Chernych, whose shot bounced off the post, then on the head of the Gibraltar goalkeeper, but ended up not in the goal, but on the outside. Just two minutes later, the mood was darkened by Edvinas Girdvainis’s second yellow card, which equalized the team’s forces on the field.

The Gibraltarians have lost their last two official matches with a combined score of 0:20. They did not even resist the French 0:14 and bowed to the Dutch 0:6. During both of these matches, the future Lithuanian opponents not only did not hit the opponent’s goal once, but also did not take a single corner.

In case of victory, the Lithuanian Football Federation (LFF) has provided 50,000 for the national team. euro bonus.

If the Lithuanians remain in the C division, they will travel to the C2 group together with the teams of Romania (FIFA-45), Kosovo (FIFA-102) and Cyprus (FIFA-125), and if they are relegated to the D division, they will be in the D1 group together with Liechtenstein (FIFA -203) and San Marino (FIFA-210).

The UEFA Nations League tournament will be played in September, October and November this year.