Virsliga season 2024 is over and what a ride it's been! RFS won the League and the Cup, Valmiera almost ceased to exist, and Daugavpils made a legitimate run for Europe! We sit down to review the ups and the downs, to reflect on our start-of-season predictions and review how our 'players to watch' did, to award our season awards, and to ponder on what to look forward to next year!

(00:02:05) End-of-season table review

(00:19:25) Reflecting on our start-of-season predictions

(00:25:44) How did our 'Players to Watch' do?

(00:41:50) End-of-season awards: Best XI, MVP, U21 MVP, Biggest Flop and Biggest surprise!

(00:51:23) What we expect of next season and will Grobina survive?

(00:56:36) Some news

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We sit down with one of the Metta Academy coaches - James Prieditis, former coach at Huddersfield, Rochdale and Burnley - to talk about Latvian football, youth development, things to consider when picking an academy for your child, and about his extraordinary connection with Latvia.

Matchday 3 of Europa League 2024/2025 is here and RFS are heading out to Germany, to play one of the most formidable teams on their fixture list - Eintracht Frankfurt. A club with 125 year history and a 58000 capacity stadium, which is expected to be sold out, is a proper powerhouse of European football. To learn more about them, their style of play, and their famous fans, we are joined by Oliver Schliegl, a football agent and former CEO of Latvian Virsliga, to share his unique experience of being a bridge between Latvian and German football.

With only four rounds to go, there is no shortage of drama and excitement remaining in Virsliga 2024! Whether it is last minute coach changes at Riga FC, seemingly unbeatable RFS, emergent Metta and resurgent Liepaja, failing Valmiera or Grobina in a free-fall, the conclusion of this season is promising to be emotional!

(02:50) Riga rumours and Simo Valakari departure

(09:45) The Latvian Cup - all that happened, scores and misfortunes

(14:00) The cup curses - PPK and Grobina

(20:55) Do Daugavpils have a shot at Europe?

(21:25) Virsliga table, form and teams observations

(23:45) Grobina league woes

(25:11) Latvia win Euro UNITY Cup!

(25:45) Our Virsliga predictions

(33:22) RFS Women win the Latvian Cup!

(34:06) Europa league: RFS vs Galatasaray

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Also, we highly recommend the Bradt Travel Guide to Latvia by Paul Brummel! It is a legitimately excellent guide (even approved by Dmitrijs, wow!) that will make your visit to Latvia much, much more special and enjoyable! Bradt offer our listeners a sweet deal with a LATVIA30 promo code!

Europa league is underway and one of the largest clubs in the world is about to visit Riga for RFS’s first home fixture at the almost fully sold out Daugava stadium. We are, of course, talking about Turkish Galatasaray! To learn about what we could expect from visiting supporters, as well as to catch up on how Galatasaray currently play, their strengths and weaknesses, Frank sat down with Ahmet Atasoy of the Tottiler Messiler podcast (@messiler)!

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Don't forget that one of the key games of Europa leagues is going to be against Ajax in Riga on the 23rd January 2025, meaning that it's time to start growing a nice and thick beard to keep your face warm during the match. To help you with this, our friends at manscaped.com developed The Beard Hedger - a specialist shaver for your face bush. To get 20% off any order at manscaped.com and for free shipping, use our promo code LFP20.

For a chance to win a EUR100+ shaver (The Lawn Mover 5.0), share what you feel was the closest shave of this season thus far on any of our social media channels (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok)!

Also, we highly recommend the Bradt Travel Guide to Latvia by Paul Brummel! It is a legitimately excellent guide (approved by Dmitrijs!) that will make your visit to Latvia much, much more special and enjoyable!

RFS, Auda, Riga FC and Liepaja delivered a long and generally very successful qualification campaign in Europe, culminating with RFS making history by qualifying for the Europa League league stage, where they will face Galatasaray, Anderlecht, PAOK, Ajax, FCSB, Eintracht Frankfurt and Maccabi Tel-Aviv!

But with all this excitement, we feel that Virsliga got a bit neglected, so, in this episode, we catch up on what's been going on during the summer!

(00:00) Table update

(19:57) Niang to USG!

(22:26) Big Riga Derby 3

(23:35) Can Riga FC catch up?

(27:57) Nations league C debut

(33:24) Europa league in Riga

One of the key games of Europa leagues is going to be against Ajax in Riga on the 23rd January 2025, meaning that it's time to start growing a nice and thick beard to keep your face warm during the match. To help you with this, our friends at manscaped.com developed The Beard Hedger - a specialist shaver for your face bush. To get 20% off any order at manscaped.com and for free shipping, use our promo code LFP20.

For a chance to win a EUR100+ shaver (The Lawn Mover 5.0), share what you feel was the closest shave of this season thus far on any of our social media channels (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok)!

Also, we highly recommend the Bradt Travel Guide to Latvia by Paul Brummel! It is a legitimately excellent guide (approved by Dmitrijs!) that will make your visit to Latvia much, much more special and enjoyable! Bradt offer our listeners a sweet deal with a LATVIA30 promo code!

And then there was one! With Auda unable to hold on to their first leg advantage against FC Drita from Kosovo and losing 3-2 in the second leg away, it is now up to RFS to represent Latvia in Europe! And they will whatever the outcome of the final qualification round but, having already qualified for the Conference League, wouldn't it be nice to up the ante and take it all the way to the Europa League?

With only the Cypriot champions APOEL in the way, we are joined by Stel from the This is Mappa podcast to learn more about what this club is all about!

Did you get inspired by the romance of Latvian football and the beautiful sights in the background of LNK Sporta Parks? If so and you'd like to visit Latvia to enjoy the beautiful game and enjoy our beautiful country, make sure to get your hands on a proper guide (and not those knock-off touristy ones that highlights generic things ChatGPT can). And we've got just the one for you - the Bradt Travel guide to Latvia! Not only is it legitimately impressive, Bradt are also giving our listeners a great deal with the promo code LATVIA30 !

We continue to reflect on how Latvian clubs performed in the European competitions, where three Riga teams played against clubs from Norway, Poland, and Northern Ireland: Bodo/Glimt, Śląsk Wrocław, and Cliftonville. One game won, one game lost, and one game broke our hearts...

We then look ahead to the upcoming Europa league QR3 match between FC RFS and Andorran champions UE Santa Coloma, and Frank interviews Eljon Kastrati of Kosovo Football (@FootballKosovo) about FK Auda's Conference League QR3 opponents - FC Drita (which means "light" in Albanian).

Please remember to share your thoughts and predictions, like the podcast and join in the conversation in the comments!

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European cup qualification rounds 1 are behind us and the highlight is RFS breaking the 15-year long curse of Latvian clubs not progressing past QR1 of the Champions League by convincingly beating Northern Irish Champions Larne FC 7-0 on aggregate! FK Auda also made history by winning their first ever European game and by progressing through a European qualification round for the first time, beating Faroese B36 Torshavn 3-0 on aggregate. Liepaja didn't make it (unsurprisingly) and Riga FC only start their Conference League campaign from QR2.

In this episode, we are first joined by Peter Cinnamond of the Kicking Match: An Irish League Podcast to reflect on RFS - Larne FC tie as well as to learn more about Auda's QR2 opponents - Northern Irish Cup winners Cliftonville FC. We are then joined by a Norwegian sports journalist - Jonas Adnan Giæver - to learn more about RFS's Champions League QR2 opponents - FK Bodø/Glimt.

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