Romanian national football team has won its first point at EURO 2016
Wednesday, the national squad managed a 1-all draw in their fixture against Switzerland
Florin Orban, 16.06.2016, 15:09
Again Romania mainly relied on a defensive game. If we think of the game against France, manager Anghel Iordanescu operated several changes in his lineup, yet he maintained the team’s defensive orientation. In the first half, Romanian defenders were so good at closing offensive lanes towards their goalie Ciprian Tatarusanu.
The Romanians managed to up audacious counter-attacking bouts creating very good scoring opportunities. On 18 minute, Alex Chipciu managed to penetrate the Swiss’ box, Stephan Lichtsteiner grabbed him by the T-shirt and the referee granted a penalty kick to the Romanians. Bogdan Stancu turned the spot-kick into a goal and with two goals on his record sheet he has become EURO 2016’s top scorer so far, jointly with French footballer Dmitry Payet.
After the goal, the Romanians had several other opportunities to score. Yet on 57 minutes it was the Swiss who did that, through Admir Mehmedi. After that, the game gradually moved to the Romanians half of the pitch. Anghel Iordanescu’s trainees gave in, physically, and the Swiss took full control of the last part of the game. However, the 1-all draw result is a fair one.
In the second fixture of the same group, France outclassed Albania 2-nil, with both goals being scored in extra time.
If they want to keep their hopes alive to go past the group stage, the Romanians are in dire need of a win against Albania, in this coming Sunday’s game in Lyon. Albanian national squad’s defensive party will be difficult to penetrate since they almost perfectly closed in on their Swiss and French opponents’ offensive bouts in the recently-played fixtures.
However, the team coached by Italian Giovanni de Biasi is likely to put up a more open game against Romania, since a win would maintain Albania in the race for the group’s 3rd position. Under the circumstances, Romanian strikers could have much wider maneuver areas on the pitch. But let’s just see how Anghel Iordanescu will think out the fixture against Albania.
