Nikars relish giant-killing feats

FK Nikars Riga face, in their coach's words, "a big gap in class" against some of the strongest teams in Europe in next month's UEFA Futsal Cup Elite round but they can take solace from the manner in which they reached that stage.

Last 16
The semi-professional Latvian champions are the only one of the seven Preliminary round group winners who made it through from the subsequent Main round to the last 16. Tuesday's draw matched them with three-time semi-finalists AFC Kairat Almaty, strong Azerbaijan hosts Araz Naxçivan and experienced Greek campaigners Athina '90 in November's Elite round, but Nikars showed their class in the previous stage, recovering from a 10-1 loss to FK Era-Pack Chrudim with a surprise 4-3 defeat of Poland's Hurtap Łęczyca.

Surprise result
Aleksejs Baranovs, this season's UEFA Futsal Cup top scorer with ten goals, claimed two against Łęczyca including the winner with less than two minutes left. He told uefa.com: "Łęczyca can blame only themselves. I know that they had ordered a celebratory dinner before our game as they were fully confident they would have something to celebrate after the match. They lacked fighting spirit."

Underestimated
Nikars striker Sergejs Zolotuhins added: "The Łęczyca coach said at the press conference that the game against Chrudim was the most important for their team. He did not take us into account. But we started to press Łęczyca from the opening. They have technically gifted players. If we had allowed them to play they would have beaten us like Chrudim."

Elite round
That was some change from their competition debut in 2008/09, when they lost all three Main round games, and Aleksandrs Dibrivnijs's side then overcame FK Nautara Kaunas 3-2 to make sure of progress. However, the coach knows that against professional teams like Kairat and Araz, both boasting world-class Brazilians in addition to the cream of local talent, his team face a different scale of task altogether.

'Gap in class'
"To be among the top 16 European sides is a huge success," Dibrivnijs said. "It will be hard to play against top-ranked teams in the Elite round. We are weaker in all areas. We are amateurs and all of our players have full-time jobs. There is a big gap in class between the teams. The big teams have Brazilians in their squads who are the best players in the world. What can I say? It seems that Brazilians are born with the ball in their hands. We want to win but of course we cannot set such a goal in every match. But we should not lose all our games. We will try to take third place in the group. And we can hope for a positive result against Athina."