LATVIA

We’ve been warmly welcomed to lots of countries - but few come close to Latvia, where we were immediately met upon arrival by Virsliga president Maksims Krivunecs.

Maksims gave us a brilliantly frank and in-depth interview in which he talked about why so many former Latvian champions have gone bust and why he is in favour of teaming up with Lithuania and Estonia to form a Baltic League - his plan for which he told on the podcast.

That was followed by dinner and a live podcast with the lovely guys at the Baltic Football Podcast, who also accompanied us to the Latvian Cup final between Riga FC and Auda FK.

The thing that first struck us was that only 1,043 fans attended at a stadium with a capacity of 7,300, meaning it was only 14% full.

Perhaps that was because of the fact or the fact that basketball reigns supreme in Latvia. But it could have partly been down to the relationship between the two clubs, which have an unofficial but widely accepted multi-club ownership structure.

In fact even Eduards Dašķevičs, the scorer of Auda FK’s winning goal (final score: 2-1), was on loan from Riga FC! And he did not hold back with his celebration!