The national team just finished the fourth window of the World Cup qualifiers yesterday evening, and already today information about possible changes in the head coach position, held by Rimas Kurtinaitis since October 2024, started appearing in the media.
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About a generous offer from the association to the 48-year-old specialist Darius Songaila was announced on Monday by “BasketNews” journalist Karolis Tiškevičius.
“They (ALK) have made a generous offer to Darius Songaila, that is a fact,” said K. Tiškevičius in the “BasketNews” podcast. “The decision about the future will be made by Songaila, not Rimas Kurtinaitis. Of course, the situation is complicated because Songaila will play in the European Cup with Šiauliai. Šiauliai do not want to release Songaila. If he accepts the national team’s offer, then the question is how it will be with the Šiauliai club. It is believed in Šiauliai that Songaila will stay in the organization. The club and the national team would be very difficult to reconcile. The sources who tell me this definitely know what they are talking about.”
The general secretary of the “Lithuanian Basketball” association, Dominykas Domarkas, responded to this information.
“I can definitely deny this information because there was no contact with Darius Songaila at all,” Domarkas told the 15min portal. “None of us spoke with Darius – neither I, nor Mindaugas (Mindaugas Balčiūnas – ALK president), nor Linas (Linas Kleiza – ALK men’s program director). Whoever is communicating further, you probably need to ask Karolis Tiškevičius.”
According to 15min information, ALK officials, after the painful loss in Bologna in July, twice tried to persuade D. Songaila to take over the national team’s helm – both during and after the European U20 Championship. However, both times the legendary national player said “no.”
R. Kurtinaitis replaced Kazys Maksvytis as head coach after the national team’s failure in the Olympic qualifiers in Puerto Rico.
Led by the Kaunas native who won the European Cup three times in his career, the Lithuanian national team confidently passed the 2025 European qualifiers and performed solidly in the main tournament in Tampere and Riga (5th place).
Kurtinaitis’s position started to heat up already in the first stage of the 2027 World Cup qualifiers when the national team, thanks to Ignas Sargiūnas’s miraculous benefit, escaped in London but later suffered two painful defeats against Italy and one against Iceland.
More than the results, fans were angered by Kurtinaitis’s post-game rhetoric, suggesting that the national team members do not make a tragedy out of the losses, even though the World Cup train has moved far away.
According to the president of the “Lithuanian Basketball” association, Mindaugas Balčiūnas, the coach had submitted his resignation after the failure in Bologna at the beginning of July.
However, the unsuccessful search for a new head coach resulted in Kurtinaitis remaining in the position.
Does the lack of talks with Songaila mean that Kurtinaitis will continue working with the team?
“We are meeting tomorrow to review the entire strategy,” Domarkas told 15min. “I think you will receive all the information about what will happen soon. At the moment, I can definitely deny the information about the offer to Darius Songaila.”
In the fourth FIBA window, Lithuanians again won one game, defeating Bosnia and Herzegovina in Vilnius on Monday, thus maintaining hope for a place in the World Cup.
“Of course, the result is not satisfying, but considering all objective reasons, it is enough to keep hope,” Domarkas assessed the loss in Istanbul and the win in Vilnius for the 15min portal. “We will definitely continue to fight to be at the World Cup.”
The last time the Lithuanian men’s national team missed the World Cup was in 2002.
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