Prienai 1 - 4 Kroota (383733096)

The weather was pretty good, and a crowd of 12000 had shown up at Prienai Arena for the match. Laurent Combe was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Patrik Chapuisat and Tomi Houni. Prienai had chosen a strategic 4-4-2 formation. Starters: Ščeglinskas - Gasiulevičius, Rumbucis, Klusovskis, Kerpis - Kobilinskas, Motovilov, Shturmin, Uleris - Vaitmonas, Kus.

Kroota started off with a 5-2-3 lineup. The following players took the field: Pitlikas - Skorczyk, Vesci, Grgurev, Dufour, Torres Camargo - Hanus, Barrière - Strackas, Surovecas, Stulgaitis.

Counter-attacking seemed to be the preferred strategy of Kroota. Kroota showed their counterattack skill 3 minutes into the match by breaking through the middle, with P. Stulgaitis scoring uncontested for 0 - 1. The opposing supporters gave the referee an earful when he only gave J. Skorczyk from Kroota a yellow card after a mistimed challenge from behind 22 minutes into the game. That was far too lenient! Prienai were forced into a substitution as D. Shturmin couldn't continue due to some rough treatment, forcing V. Valatkaitis to come in off the bench. After a fatal mistake from the away team's right side defence 25 minutes into the match, an alert D. Kerpis bagged the ball for Prienai, levelling the score to 1 - 1. Prienai's G. Klusovskis was shown a yellow card after 28 minutes for slicing down an opponent. Kroota's counterattacks were lethal to the opposing defence, allowing J. Skorczyk to score easily from the right flank for 1 - 2. A drive down the left side allowed D. Surovecas to get in close and score another goal for Kroota after 41 minutes, taking the score to 1 - 3. After this, you could see that the players of Kroota were more interested in killing time than scoring more goals. 1 - 3 was the halftime score. Prienai enjoyed most of the ball, as they maintained 72 percent of possession.

Kroota caught their opponents out with a clever counterattack down the right wing 51 minutes into the match. J. Skorczyk was able to finish off the move - 1 - 4. After several obvious shirt pulling incidents, V. Valatkaitis got himself booked. The manager of Prienai was not happy. A late sliding challenge from J. Skorczyk was deemed to be his second yellow card offence by the referee, resulting in him being sent off, and Kroota left a man down. Some lightning fast two foot dribbles by B. Kobilinskas left J. Torres Camargo way behind after 71 minutes, but the shot was just wide. F. Vaitmonas charged down the left and looked sure to score for Prienai 86 minutes into the game, but his shot went just wide. Prienai claimed to have seen most of the ball, and the statistics agreed with them - possession being 72 percent.

The most dominating Prienai player was without a doubt M. Uleris. On the other hand, J. Rumbucis's play was disheartening. Kroota's best player was S. Strackas. However, H. Hanus made a disastrous appearance. The match ends 1 - 4.