Lithuania U19

Lithuania's under-19 side took shape once the country had its own football federation again after 1991, built to carry players through from the youth ranks toward the senior team rather than to chase trophies in its own right. Its first recorded outing came at the 1998 European Under-18 Championship, where a 1-7 defeat to Germany in Larnaca set an early low mark that nothing since has matched for severity.

The group trains at the LFF Kaunas Training Centre and plays home fixtures at Raudondvario stadionas in the Kaunas district, a 1,500-seat ground with artificial turf and a covered stand on one side, open slope on the other. The setup carries symbolic weight for a side whose biggest occasion so far took place across town: hosting the 2013 European Under-19 Championship, when Lithuania faced defending champions Spain at the S. Darius and S. Girėnas Stadium in Kaunas in front of almost 9,000 spectators, the largest crowd the team has drawn.

Markas Beneta passed through the squad in 2011 and 2012 before going on to win 26 senior caps, one of the clearer examples of the age group doing its job of feeding talent upward. Mindaugas Čepas now holds the head coach post; Antanas Vingilys had it for the 2013 tournament and the qualifying campaign that followed in 2018.

Three Baltic Cup titles, in 2010, 2015 and 2017, mark the team's best return at this level, all of them won inside a rivalry that predates most of the players who contest it now. Latvia and Estonia remain the fixtures that matter most, the three federations having measured their under-19 sides against each other since the competition's early years, long before any of the current squad was born.