Lithuania’s six-game losing streak began in June when the men’s national team let the Baltic Cup slip out of their hands by losing to Estonia. By now the country is 141st in the world and has been outranked even by Burundi and Suriname. The youth coaches are trying to change the future outlook.
According to Lithuania’s statistics, football has become much more popular over the last five years and is rivalling basketball, the country’s most popular sport. In 2019, almost 23,500 young people played basketball, while 19,500 youths chose football. However, the situation has now changed – in 2023, only around 300 children chose basketball over football.
Algimantas Dvareckas, who works with kids aged 14 to 16 in the southern city of Marijampolė, said there are not enough places for the kids to train.
“The interest in football has really grown. As far as I have spoken to other Lithuanian coaches, they all [see it]. Sometimes they cannot even accept children for training because there are no places,” he told LRT.lt.
It’s also difficult to run training sessions in winter, according to Tadas Šumskus, who works at the Žalgiris Academy in Kaunas and also coaches Lithuania’s under-10 and under-11 teams.
“For example, Klaipėda is a big city, but it doesn’t have an arena where children can play sports all year round. Same in Šiauliai, Panevėžys,” the coach said.
The situation is slowly changing, but it still isn’t enough, said Rolandas Džiaukštas, the head coach of the Žalgiris Football Academy in Vilnius. “The academies are fighting among themselves, especially in Vilnius, over the pitches, there is a lack of them, especially in the winter period, and this is the biggest problem,” he said.
Some parents do not want their kids to play outside for fear of them getting sick.
“There are examples in Denmark, where children play outdoor sports almost all year round, but I think sometimes [parents] make excuses rather than look for solutions. It is possible to play outdoor sports in winter with children under 10 and there will be no problem,” Šumskus said.
Lithuanian footballers not inspiring
Džiaukštas, who works at the Žalgiris Academy in Vilnius, has played 40 matches as part of the national team and has also worked as the coach. He is now helping the country’s future generation of footballers.
The discussions on Lithuania’s football being hopeless have a negative impact on the youths, according to Džiaukštas.
“I talk to more than one coach, including Lithuanian coaches abroad, who all say that our biggest problem is that we underestimate ourselves,” he said. “Looking at the youth teams, there have been some good and interesting results this year, maybe we are slowly turning the corner.”
However, children do not see role models in the country.
“Maybe because of such [poor] results they don’t know their country’s players,” said Lukas Juškevičius, who trains boys aged 10 to 12 at the Šiauliai Football Academy.
According to Šumskus from the Žalgiris Academy in Kaunas, now is a good time to make a change.
“We love football and the results don’t affect that too much. At least I look at it from the point of view that there is an open market in Lithuania to make a change,” he said.
Looking ahead
The children flooding into football academies can be moulded into professionals, but it’s still unclear what needs to change to avoid repeating the current mistakes.
According to coaches interviewed by LRT.lt, the lack of personal flair is one of the key problems. “The individual quality of the players, the individual skill varies,” said Šumskus.
Other national teams have at least several higher-skilled players who can make a difference on the pitch. Meanwhile, Lithuania still lacks “someone who can play individually and make unique decisions”, added Šumskus.
It is also crucial to promote individuality at a young age, Džiaukštas added.
“There are things that a football player has to be able to do in every age group, and you have to follow those recommendations. There is individualism at a young age, a player has to learn how to play one-on-one, he has to be courageous,” he said.
Instilling the correct mentality on the pitch and allowing children to make mistakes can help change that, according to Šumskus from Kaunas.
“It's just about removing the tension and letting children make mistakes, to think out of the box, which is the main thing that we are missing,” he added.
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