A thrilling match unfolded on Sunday afternoon at Jānis Daliņš Stadium, where Valmiera secured a 4-1 victory over BFC Daugavpils in the 26th round.
The winning team sticks to an unchanged lineup—an unwritten rule in sports. Valmiera’s head coach Gatis Kalniņš adhered to this principle, albeit with one forced exception—Renārs Varslavāns was unavailable for this match.
The home team demonstrated their ambitions as early as the 2nd minute when Daugavpils goalkeeper Frenks Dāvids Orols couldn’t handle a long-range shot from Gustavo. The game continued as a fairly balanced contest, but with sharper counterattacks from Valmiera, which were often stopped only by fouls. In the 29th minute, no one could stop the “hot” Alioune Ndoye, who, after maneuvering past two defenders, blasted the ball into the net, making it 2-0.
Near the end of the first half, the visiting team’s offense stood out with a very effective and successful play, as Barthelemy Diedhiou scored. After the halftime break, Daugavpils players did not give up and immediately launched an attack, earning an 11-meter penalty kick. Aleksej Golijanin aimed for the bottom right corner, but to his misfortune, the flying Dāvis Ošs was already there, saving yet another penalty.
This was undoubtedly the turning point of the match—from then on, the game was controlled by the home team. The Daugavpils team had to work hard in defense, which they did well until the final ten minutes of the game. In the 86th minute, Ndoye once again demonstrated his individual brilliance, outplaying his markers and scoring his second goal of the match, sending the ball into Orols’s net.
And that wasn’t all. The substitutes Meissa Diop, Shuhei Kawasaki and Yusuke Omori combined in the final attack of the match to score the fourth goal—Omori delivered an unstoppable shot, marking the young Japanese player’s first goal in the Virslīga.
This victory is more than just three points in the standings.
Already this Saturday, at 14:00 at Jānis Daliņš Stadium, we’re in for an exciting battle in the quarter-finals of the 11.lv Latvian Cup against FC RFS.
