A successful third period helped the Latvian floorball team win a tough victory over the Estonian team in the round of 16 of the world championship and secure a place among the eight best teams in the world. On Thursday at 19:00 the Latvian national team will play a quarter-final against the tournament hosts, the Swiss floorball players.
Latvian floorball players have a very positive record in their previous games against their northern neighbors, including victories in all four games of the world championships. However, the Estonians fared much better in this tournament – they won all three games of subgroup C in the competition of the second eighth of the world rankings.
This time it was unusually difficult for the Latvian national team. Midway through the first third, Morics Krūmiņš put the Latvians ahead, but that was the only success until the end of the second third. Klāvs Jansons, the representative of club “Ķekava”, put the ball into the goal, but the goal was not counted for breaking the rules.
In addition, the Estonians not only played in organized defense and only rarely allowed the ball to reach their own goal, but at the end of the second third they scored two goals in less than two minutes, not without the help of luck – 1: 2 .
In the third period, the Latvian floorball players significantly increased the pace of the game from the start, and this immediately paid off: Rolands Kovalevskis put the team ahead with two precise shots in four minutes. A moment later, Jānis Ragovskis took a two-goal lead and he himself added a point to the battle in the penultimate minute – 5: 2.
The teams in the top eight of the world rankings, who played in groups A and B in the first phase, also won other round of 16. Therefore, Sweden and Norway, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as Finland and Germany will meet in the remaining pairs of the quarter-finals.
