Nations League: Lithuania vs Kazakhstan

Lithuania and Kazakhstan face off at the LFF stadionas in what was expected to be a close clash. Lithuania did a great job defeating New Zealand in a friendly in November, with the team regaining much needed confidence.

However, you should keep in mind that Valdas Urbonas' army only got 1 point out of 24 possible points in the Euro 2020 qualifiers. Lithuania has won 11 times in the Baltic Cup, only Latvia has won more. Despite this, Lithuania holds the record for the most consecutive Baltic Cup, four in a row from 1996 to 2000. Vytautas Andriuskevicius is playing for Portland Timbers at left-back. Andriuskevicius started his career at FBK Kaunas, but he made no more than 17 appearances for the Lithuanian club between 2007 and 2010, Andriuskevicius made his Lithuanian debut on 10 August 2011 in a friendly with Armenia. Valdas Urbonas stressed that the pandemic had significantly affected the composition of the squad, he wanted Ernestas Šetkas on the team, but his family circumstances did not allow him to come. Emilijus Zubas recently changed the club and he lacked practice, so decided not to invite him to the team but they had D. Bartkus, T. Švedkauskas and E. Gertmon instead. He wanted to see Ben Šatkas in defender, but he didn't have a long-term contract and started training late and called Antanavičius, who recently became the Slovenian champion to fillet, Antanavičius attracted the pay attention by stubborn play.

The Kazaks have shown some positive activity in their qualifying campaign, with the team collecting ten points in the process. Michal Bilek's teachers and students have great ambitions for the upcoming UEFA Nations League campaign, and they should take advantage of the Friday game being played behind closed doors. It should be noted that the two teams met for the first time in a competitive match, when Lithuania and Kazakhstan met in a friendly six years ago, they drew 1-1. Kazakhstan's three players will not attend UEFA Nations League matches against Lithuania and Belarus, including goalkeeper Igor Shatsky, defender Dmitry Shomko and striker Alexei Shchetkin. Almaty goalkeeper "Kairat" Danil Ustimenko, "Ordabasy" defender from Shymkent Timur Dosmagambetov and striker Sergey Khizhnichenko were invited instead. The Kazakhstan national team will play their first match on September 4 away from Lithuania and then on 7 September Almaty will host the Belarus national team. The partner of the Kazakhstan Football Federation is Samruk-Kazyna Sovereign Wealth Fund JSC.