The Estonian women’s national football team have reached the final of the Baltic Cup after winning their semi-final on penalties against Lithuania on Thursday afternoon. Estonia will now meet either Latvia or the Faeroe Islands in Sunday’s final as they look to retain the trophy they won in 2022.
It took until the final quarter of Thursday’s Baltic Cup semi-final between Estonia and Lithuania to catch fire and there would certainly be no repeat of Estonia’s comfortable win in the same fixture two years ago.
JK Tabasalu’s Anette Salei finally opened the scoring on 74 minutes after a cross from Lisette Tammik (Flora Tallinn), in what was a tightly contested opening game of this year’s tournament. It didn’t take long for Lithuania to draw level however, with FC Ginka midfielder Erika Å upelyte netting the equalizer just two minutes later with a powerful shot from range.
When Šupelyte was on target again in the 79th minute, converting a cross from Servette FC forward Rimante Jonušaite, it looked like Lithuania were on their way to the final.
Estonia’s luck seemed to have finally run out when Flora Tallinn midfielder Mari Liis Lillemäe was dismissed after being shown a second yellow card with just two minutes of normal time left on the clock.
But just when they thought they were out, Vlada Kubassova, dragged Estonia back in. Kubassova, who plies her tried in Hungary with Ferencváros, was brought down in the penalty area deep into stoppage time. The Estonian forward made no mistake from the spot to make it 2-2.
With no extra-time played in this year’s Baltic Cup, the game headed straight to penalties. With the pressure on, only three spot-kicks were converted in the shootout. All the matters for Estonia is that Lisette Tammik converted the decisive one to book a place in Thursday’s final.
Estonia now await the winner of the second semi-final between Latvia and the Faeroe Islands, which kicks off at 7 p.m. in Riga on Thursday evening.
Both the final and the third place play-off are scheduled for October 27. All matches in the competition can be followed live on Soccernet TVÂ here.
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