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Florin Orban, 19.10.2017, 14:54

The Romanian national football team next month will play its two high-level friendly matches. Romania’s opponents are the national teams of Turkey and the Netherlands, respectively. The match against Turkey will be hosted by the city of Cluj on November 9th. The game against the Netherlands is scheduled for November 14 and will be hosted by the National Arena in Bucharest.

Both Turkey and the Netherlands have wasted the opportunity to make it to the 2018 edition of the World Cup, to be held in Russia. Turkey came 4th in Group 1, where Iceland had a direct qualification, while Croatia went to the play-off games. Ukraine came 3rd. For its last games, Turkey had Romanian coach Mircea Lucescu at the helm.

The Netherlands were part of Group A, where France came at the top of the table. On a par with the Netherlands in terms of points, Sweden went to the playoffs and had a better goal average.

Romania was 4th-placed in Group E, where Poland managed a direct qualification, while Denmark went to the playoffs. 3rd in Group E came the national squad of Montenegro.

Romania’s last fixtures against Turkey occurred in the preliminaries of the 2014 World Cup. In October 2012, Romania grabbed a 1-nil win in Istanbul, while in September 2013 in Bucharest, Turkey snatched a 2-nil win against Romania. In the same qualification campaign, Romania’s national squad also played a game against the Netherlands, sustaining a 4-1 defeat in Bucharest in October 2012, and another defeat, 4-nil, in March 2013, in Amsterdam.

The Romanian national football squad will play its forthcoming official fixtures in September 2018, concurrently with the debut fixtures of the new competition labeled UEFA Nations League. The group stage draw will be held on January 24, 2018.