Ever since Simonas Stankevicius checked into his hotel in London at the start of the week, the Leicester City and Lithuania striker has been gazing out of his room, enjoying the view and daring to dream. “I think Wembley is the biggest stadium you can play in,” Stankevicius says. “I’ve never been to it before. Now I’m looking at it through my window and I can see the big arch.”
Stankevicius breaks into excited laughter. He is 19, the youngest player in Lithuania’s squad to face England in the Euro 2016 qualifier on Friday and still to make his debut for Leicester after turning professional last summer. A regular in Leicester’s Under-21 team – he scored in Monday’s 3-1 victory over Tottenham Hotspur – Stankevicius’s competitive experience in England is limited to 188 minutes across five appearances during a loan spell with Nuneaton Town, the Conference Premier side, earlier in the season.
Wembley, with a 90,000 sell-out crowd, is a giddy prospect. “I’ve been waiting for this match for two months and I was quite stressed because it wasn’t long before the day when we were meeting up that I received a call-up,” Stankevicius says. “Even if I’m not playing, to see it from the bench … I just want to be in Wembley.”
Stankevicius is the only member of Igoris Pankratjevas’s squad attached to an English club and it would be fair to say that coming to these shores is not exactly a well-trodden path for Lithuanian footballers. “Years ago there was one Lithuanian player in the Premier League, Tomas Danilevicius with Arsenal, but that was not even for the whole season,” he says.
Danilevicius has not gone down as one of Arsène Wenger’s more memorable signings. The striker peaked with a goal in a pre-season friendly against Barcelona in 2000, when he was effectively on trial, and after going on to join Arsenal on a permanent basis later that year, Danilevicius made only three substitute appearances in the space of eight days, before drifting into the wilderness.
Stankevicius, who has won eight senior caps, hopes to make a much bigger impression in England with Leicester. The odds, however, will be stacked against the 6ft 2in centre-forward and his Lithuania team-mates at Wembley. England sit top of Group E with a 100% record and the last time they lost a competitive fixture at home was in 2007.
“It’s a big task,” Stankevicius says. “But I think our players are buzzing to play at Wembley, they can’t wait. Every player will not play 100%, every player will do more than maximum. For everybody this game will be something in history. A lot of Lithuania fans are coming as well and we don’t want to let them down. This is the day you can show what you have done in your career.”
A country ranked 94th in the world with a population of under three million has managed to upset the form book in the past. Germany were held to a 1-1 draw in Gelsenkirchen in 2003 in a European Championship qualifier and Lithuania achieved the same result in Naples in 2006, shortly after Italy won the World Cup.
Stankevicius makes the point it is not all about talent. “Every England player is a good individual but they don’t have that team spirit Lithuania have – we win because of our spirit. Lithuanians love Lithuania. After the second world war we were [part of the Soviet Union] and we fight for the Lithuania flag, we fight for our country, it’s just in our blood.”
With that in mind, Stankevicius says it is not in Lithuania’s make-up to come to Wembley and put 11 men behind the ball. “Most of the time we are playing counterattack, keeping good shape, but we are not parking the bus, definitely not. We’ll try to play and try to show what we can do.”
As for England, Stankevicius believes Harry Kane is the man to watch. “[Daniel] Sturridge is injured, so I guess Kane will play. Kane could be very big. He’s banging in goals in the Premier League. But this is his first time in international football, so he may feel a bit nervous. With the other England players, I’ve always admired Rooney. After the game I want to get his shirt. He’s a legend.”
Brought up in the city of Panevezys, Stankevicius left home at 14 to join Lithuania’s national football academy in Kaunas before being spotted by Leicester playing for his country at Under-16 level. He has sporting genes – his mother still plays tennis semi-professionally in Lithuania and his grandfather, whom he says has been a great source of support and is “always setting me targets to score goals”, was a professional footballer.
Although Stankevicius is settled at Leicester and thoroughly enjoying his football, he admits the early days were tricky. “It was very difficult to adapt to the English style of football, that took me two years. It’s quite a tough game in England and I never knew physical football before. In Lithuania our coach won’t even let us go in the gym.”
Off the field was every bit as challenging. As well as getting to grips with the language – his English is excellent now – Stankevicius missed his family, Lithuanian food and life back in the country he describes as “the most beautiful place in the world”.
However, not everything seems quite so serene in Lithuania. There are growing concerns about tensions in Ukraine, prompting the Lithuanian government to announce it will restore compulsory military service from September for men aged 19-27. Could Stankevicius be called up? “No, no, no. The people who are playing for Lithuania teams, you are not getting involved. That will not be for me,” he says, smiling.
Serving his country on the pitch is where Stankevicius wants to be and it does not get much better than taking on England at Wembley. “We had a team meeting this week and quite a lot of people have never played in front of such a big crowd before. But the coach said: ‘Don’t think about all the people, just play the game’. This is our first time against England and if we can get a draw it will be written into our history.”