Defeat against Mangal – we risk to be left outside Play-off round

We played the penultimate regular season game in the Riga Football League, and this time the game was both extremely principled and crucial – against Mangal. Losing would practically mean losing our chances to the Play-off phase of the tournament, so the only goal was to win! It should be mentioned that several of our former players play in Mangal. Even though Mangal played the game on previous day,the team lost to Riga Evergrand, against us they had to be especially motivated.

One of the team leaders, Ricсardo Paoli, couldn’t help us in the game. This time he was replaced by the experienced Andrejs Aņņenkovs, who was absent since the qualification tournament on October 27th.

Unfortunately, we started the game very passively – in the first minutes we allowed our opponents to create a number of dangerous opportunities. And already after the third minute after a misunderstanding in defense, Nils Veipāns scored an own goal. After conceding a goal we activated a bit and were able to create some very good goal scoring opportunities. However, the first half ended with a equal game and 0:1 for us.

The start of the second half was pretty bad for us, Mangal scored twice. Three goal deficit forced us to play risky, unfortunately without success. We got to good positions for a shot, but the ball didn’t go into a goal. At the end of the game, our opponents used several of our defense mistakes and scored 4 goals in the last 9 minutes, which set the score to 0:7.

We still have remained the theoretical expectations of entering into the TOP-12 and continue the fight in the Play-Off phase. To make this happen:

1. In the last game we have to get a point from BallIn, Mangal need lose to FC Kengarags and Old School have to lose both remaining games against Riga Evergrande and Tente. In this case, we will finish 6th in our group ahead of Mangal and Old School.
2. In the last game we have to win BallIn, Mangal mustn’t win FC Kengarags, and Old School doesn’t get more than 2 points in the last two games. In that case, we can even move up to the 5th place if BallIn doesn’t win Napalm in their last game.

On Sunday we are waiting for the most important game of this tournament so far.

Kārlis Villerušs (FK Lielupe captain): “I warned the players before the game that they shouldn’t underestimate opponent. However, it looks like it didn’t help, we began to allow our opponent too much tonight. We looked very weak, admittedly, it was more of a psychological moment, because we conceded a quick goal and we were unable to realize our own moments. Now we have nothing to lose, ahead of the final game against BallIn, where everything will be decided. There are several of our players in BallIn who will be extra motivated against us. It will be a very tough game, but this may be the last game of this tournament, so it’s all or nothing.“

Mangal	Statistics	FK Lielupe
7	Goals	0
30	Total shots	24
21	Shots on Target	11
11	Corner kicks	4
1	Yellow cards	1
0	Red cards	0

Resource:
Riga Football League Facebook page