Montenegro – Lithuania

Montenegrin team will beat unmotivated guests from the Baltics

The Lithuanian national team approaches its last match of the qualifying phase for UEFA EURO 2024 without any chance of participating in the continental championship but with its head held high. For an extremely modest Baltic team, three draws and a win in seven qualifying matches is a good result. Now Lithuania is in the penultimate place in Group G, from which it has a theoretical chance to rise only to the third place. Montenegro is much more motivated. The Balkan side are five points behind Serbia and six points behind Hungary. The Montenegrins will have a chance to squeeze any of their rivals before the last round only if they defeat Lithuania by any score. Any other outcome will give the Serbs and Hungarians a ticket to the main round of the European Championship. Bookmakers have identified the hosts as the favourites for the upcoming match, offering odds of 1.33 on their victory. During the qualifying tournament for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the maximum that was enough for this national team was a couple of unexpected results: draws with the same score of 2:2 with the Netherlands and Turkey. In 2022, in one of the most equal groups of League B of the Nations League together with Romania, Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Montenegrins retained the right of residence in the second division of the Nations League, barely finishing third. In the current UEFA EURO qualification, apart from two victories over the Bulgarians, the Montenegrin team picked up one point each against Lithuania and Hungary. Since the beginning of 2021, the Lithuanians have scored two victories in official meetings. Interestingly, Lithuania faced Bulgaria in both victories two years apart. At the end of last year's Nations League, the Lithuanian national team crashed out of League C, having managed to pick up one point in six games against Faroe Islands, Luxembourg and Turkey. In the current qualifying tournament, the Lithuanians have lost three of their four games against the clear favourites: Hungary and Serbia. With Montenegro and Bulgaria, the Baltic team produced competitive football, but in the first meeting with the Montenegrins they avoided defeat only by scoring a goal on 90+4 minutes. In the home game, with maximum tournament motivation, Montenegro will not be so generous and will register a confident victory.