JELGAVA, Latvia — This season LMT Virslīga enjoyed more headlines outside of Latvia than ever — for the good and the bad.

The good of course refers to the successes of Ventspils in wider Europe whilst Dinaburg were making the news for all the wrong reasons.

Ventspils made Latvian history this season by being the first ever Latvian club to qualify to play in a major European football competition. However, Ventspils experienced the same fate of so many other teams trying to succeed in two campaigns, as their hold on the Virslīga slipped as their focus moved to their European campaign. Their resources and player fitness levels were further stretched as their Triobet Baltic League campaign also began.

In the meantime, Liepāja Metalurgs and Skonto were minding their own business, destroying most teams that came in their way. They also had the advantage of having less players involved in the Latvian U-20 and senior national teams. With just three rounds remaining any of these three teams could have taken the competition when Liepāja Metalurgs effectively cut the race down to two teams when they enforced a heavy 6-1 defeat on Skonto effectively ruling them out of the race.

Sitting just behind the leading teams were Dinaburg but as October arrived their season came crashing down around them with rumors rife of insider betting. When the rumors came to fruition Dinaburg saw themselves stripped off all points and their club name bandied throughout world football media. The repercussions of the falling out are still rocking the Virslīga as they try to decide what to do with Dinaburg next year. As they finished last they will effectively be demoted but herein lies the problem. Dinaburg represent Latvia’s second-largest city Daugavpils. Many argue that Daugavpils has to be represented in the top flight competition, much to the disgust of Latvia’s second-tier competition winners and Latvia’s youth competition winners who are traditionally the two promoted teams. As it currently stands, neither of these teams would come from the Daugavpils region.

So as Ventspils continued to impress in Europe their domestic form continued to flutter with Liepāja Metalurgs sneaking through to take the league title whilst Skonto could not quite do enough to demote Ventspils to third place.

The LMT Virslīga is bound to create plenty of speculation in the off-season and will be of interest to watch as the new season creeps up on us.