FC Merivälja – BLRT Grupp

Opening match of SEM qualifiers in group C between FC Merivälja and BLRT Grupp turned out to be very dramatic.

BLRT cashed in their experience in this competition very early on and took the halftime lead 0:2 after only placing two shots in entire halftime. FC Merivälja was more aggressive troughout first halftime and created several good chances trough Tebyanian, Selišek and Raita, but the score remained the same. Just couple minutes before halftime BLRT player Laidinen deliberately pushed Brorrson from behind into the spectators stands, but the referee rewarded this reckless and dangerous maneuver with only yellow card for the opponent.

Couple of minutes into second halftime Rakhansky increased the lead with clinically precised shot just outside the box. Soon after that, Raita took a shot after one of his solo efforts and opposite goalkeeper saved the shot, but landed very unfortunately and broke his leg. Match was paused for 10 minutes, while Maalinn was taken to hospital. With couple amazing saves in first halftime he kept BLRT net untouched.

After the match continued Merivälja started pressing and soon lowered the score after beautiful goal from Raita. Varblane added another one and soon after that BLRT made the 4th foul which meant 10m penalty for Merivälja. Selišek scored for 3:4. Couple of minutes before the end BLRT made another foul and after the timeout Selišek had a chance to equalize, but this time unfortunately he missed the goal. Last minute of the match was again very tense, where Merivälja was chasing equalizer while BLRT was trying to avoid another defensive foul and with couple borderline referee decisions in last seconds the score remained unchanged.

BLRT was luckier today and won the match based on their experience and couple marginal decisions by the referee, but that’s futsal. We created plenty of chances throughout the match but execution was poor from our side and we can only blame ourselves for today’s result. All in all pretty decent debut match in SEM for newcomers.

Of course, there are more important things then football in life – therefore we wish quick recovery to opposite goalkeeper Maalinn who suffered really bad injury today.