Marked for Saulius Vaitkunas
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Utenis this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Utenis training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Modestas Valskis is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad21 Sep 2026
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match12 Aug 2026
Utenis bow out of the cup
Zalgiris go through and Utenis go home, 1‑3 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.32 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
Squad17 Aug 2026
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Market17 Aug 2026
Atlantas come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Utenis did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Utenis
Gatis Jagodinskis was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market17 Aug 2026
Trakai paid $98.0K and Utenis took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Vykintas Satkus falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Edvinas Cernych, and the manager let it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.