Lost to Napalm, the crucial games ahead

We have played our fourth game in the Riga Football League, where we met the second place Napalm team. After the heavy defeat against FC Kengarags, it was very important to forget that game and try to create a much bigger pressure against Napalm.

The game started similarly and both teams created some opportunities in the first minutes of the game, but those weren’t too dangerous. The first good goal scoring opportunity for us appeared in the very first few minutes, when on a counterattack our Italian player – Riccardo Paoli couldn’t open the score. Unfortunately, opponents who took advantage of our misunderstanding in front of the goal, took the lead. Napalm scored a few more goals and by the end of the first half it was already 0:4.

We started the second half much more motivated than our opponents and we managed to reduce the goal difference up to -2, thanks to Nils Veipāns and Riccardo Paoli goals. Immediately after that, both teams exchanged with a quick goals and the score was 5:3. Until the end of the game we didn’t score anymore, but in the final minutes of the game opponents started the goal festival and reached the final score of 9:3.

This loss means that if we want to enter the tournament knockout stage, we can hardly afford to lose. We have a four-point deficit to the Play-off zone with only 3 games remaining.

Already this Friday, on December 6, we are facing an extremely important duel against OldSchool. The loss is likely to extinguish the last hopes of reaching Play-offs this season.

Just to remind, to enter the play-off round of the tournament we must finish in Top 6 teams in our group.

Kārlis Villerušs (FK Lielupe captain): “We have built up quite a lot of good moments tonight, we could open the score tonight, but once again we played bad in defense. We have a really heavy calendar. Now, at the very end of the tournament, we have the most important games to get into the Play-off stage. It’s very important that the guys are ready psychologically, after such games it is very difficult to gather and believe in themselves, because in qualification tournament we proved that we can win, that we can play well, we have to remember that feeling and go to full bank on Friday. Until Friday’s game we have a friendly match against FK Saurieši, where we’ll try to regain confidence.“

FK Lielupe	Statistics	Napalm
3	Goals	9
28	Total shots	34
12	Shots on target	19
2	Corner kicks	9
1	Yellow cards	1
0	Red cards	0

Resource:
Riga Football League Facebook lapa