Marked for Vikintas Kazlauskas
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market17 Jul 2028
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Stumbras people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The dugout17 Jul 2028
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Stumbras have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad17 Jul 2028
A row about effort at Stumbras
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Travaglini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets17 Jul 2028
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Mouhamed Souare 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.
Transfer targets17 Jul 2028
Stumbras have made the call to Zalgiris. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad29 Nov 2027
14 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Stumbras lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad29 Nov 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mantas Dubickas is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad29 Nov 2027
Rokas Klimavicius 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad22 Nov 2027
21 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Stumbras lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Mantas Dapkus is the young player of the season
Not a month, not a run of form — a whole season of being the best 21-year-old anybody in this division could put on a pitch. This is the honour that gets mentioned for the rest of his career.
Squad22 Nov 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Simon Dia and Stumbras agree another 1 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad15 Nov 2027
28 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stumbras lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad15 Nov 2027
Mouhamed Souare 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.
Squad15 Nov 2027
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Friday Apollos 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.
The dugout15 Nov 2027
Friday Apollos knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Stumbras, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Squad15 Nov 2027
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Stumbras would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Market15 Nov 2027
The clock does Simon Dia’s negotiating for him
4 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Stumbras could ask drops and the wages Simon Dia can ask rise.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad8 Nov 2027
35 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stumbras lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad8 Nov 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad8 Nov 2027
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rokas Klimavicius 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.
The dugout8 Nov 2027
The manager makes an example of Mouhamed Souare
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad8 Nov 2027
Stumbras are still strangers to each other
7 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Market8 Nov 2027
The clock does Raymond Thomas’s negotiating for him
4 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Stumbras could ask drops and the wages Raymond Thomas can ask rise.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match10 Apr 2027
The goals have deserted Stumbras
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Stumbras can tell you which week it ends in.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Mouhamed Souare 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.
Match10 Apr 2027
Kauno Zalgiris left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Sven van Doorm 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.
The dugout12 Apr 2027
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The dugout12 Apr 2027
The manager makes an example of Adrien Liprandi
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market12 Apr 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Saulius Klimavicius has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Stumbras.
Player ratings12 Apr 2027
Successful dribbles: 12. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Looking ahead12 Apr 2027
Siauliai next, and one man in the Stumbras dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad5 Apr 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match31 Mar 2027
The small margins put Stumbras out
Out, 0‑3 to Suduva, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
The terraces5 Apr 2027
A cup embarrassment at Suduva follows Stumbras home
0-3. Going out of a cup is one afternoon; going out like that is a week of phone-ins, and the manager will hear every one of them.
Market5 Apr 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Stumbras can pretend not to have heard.
Squad5 Apr 2027
At 18 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Player ratings5 Apr 2027
Successful dribbles: 21. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad5 Apr 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout5 Apr 2027
The manager makes an example of Raymond Thomas
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad5 Apr 2027
A row about effort at Stumbras
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sven van Doorm was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.