Metal 4 - 0 Apokalipses (366480133)

Dark skies made the crowd of 12000 at Metal Arena a little nervous, but the rain held off. Christian Lundskog was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Mihael Malovašič and Loïc Reil. Metal started off with a 4-4-2 lineup. Lineup: Indrāns - Nomokonov, Mokichev, Faļēvičs, Riksītis - Skujiņš, Ikstēns, Sarkanplūme, Solomakhin - Zariņš, Lanskoy.

Apokalipses tactics involved an interesting 4-4-2 combination. The following players took the field: Grigorjevs - Strazdiņš, Karpov, Liepiņš, Tiders - Pētersons, Katichev, Delle, Okladnikov - Čunčulis, Czarnul.

Almost all the way down to the corner flag, Metal's I. Skujiņš somehow managed to get a perfect pass into the middle, impossible to miss for M. Solomakhin, who struck for 1 - 0. With 15 minutes played, Metal's V. Lanskoy almost extended the lead, but his shot from the left glanced off the top of the bar to fall behind the net. J. Zariņš increased the lead for Metal to 2 - 0, getting a head onto a hooked ball from the right. The ball looked to have taken a deflection on the way in, but he's claiming it! Confident in their lead, Metal's players relaxed and focused more on defending the lead than increasing it. After 29 minutes, V. Lanskoy put Metal ahead 3 - 0 when he rose to head in a cross from the right wing. After several obvious shirt pulling incidents, V. Lanskoy got himself booked. The manager of Metal was not happy. 3 - 0 was the halftime score. Metal claimed to have seen most of the ball, and the statistics agreed with them - possession being 62 percent.

V. Lanskoy had a fantastic opportunity to put Metal up another goal 61 minutes into the match, but he fired just over the crossbar. Apokalipses's defence sent a ball soaring up the middle on a beautiful counterattack with 62 minutes gone, but O. Čunčulis's finish was met by the reaching hands of the keeper. The opposing supporters gave the referee an earful when he only gave K. Ikstēns from Metal a yellow card after a mistimed challenge from behind 70 minutes into the game. That was far too lenient! Apokalipses's D. Tiders got himself booked for a foul. S. Delle wasn't fit enough for a full game and made several mistakes out of sheer exhaustion. One of them was exploited by K. Ikstēns who shot home to make it 4 - 0. Possession in the forty-five minutes was dominated by Metal, with 64 percent of the ball.

Most important Metal player was V. Lanskoy. On the other hand, P. Indrāns's play was disheartening. U. Liepiņš performed admirably for Apokalipses. K. Grigorjevs was a disappointment, however. The match ends 4 - 0.