RRI Sports Club – Football
Florin Orban, 16.10.2024, 13:45
On Tuesday, Romania’s football squad took a big step towards participating in the 2026 World Cup. Coach Mircea Lucescu’s athletes beat the Lithuanian team 2 – 1 away in Kaunas, in the Nations League’s C fixtures (Group 2). The goals scored by Răzvan Marin, in the 18th minute, from penalty kick, and Denis Drăguș, in the 65th minute, brought the Romanians’ fourth consecutive victory in this year’s edition of the League. The Romanian team did not play the brilliant game it did in Saturday’s match with Cyprus, but managed to prevail. Also on Tuesday, Kosovo beat Cyprus 3-nil and remains three points behind Romania.
The last matches of the campaign will take place in a month. The Romanians will play in Bucharest, on November 15, against Kosovo, and on the 18th, against Cyprus. The best four group winners from the Nations League have reserved spots in the play-off for the 2026 World Cup, and Romania, now, sits well in this race, having 12 points out of 12. Romania has not qualified for a World Cup since the last century.
We are still talking about the final tournaments, noting that Romania’s National Youth Team, made up of players under 21, qualified for next year’s European Championship on Tuesday. They defeated the similar team from Switzerland 3-1, in Bucharest, in the last match of Group E of the preliminaries. The goals of the Romanian team were scored by Ianis Stoica, in the 16th and 35th minutes, and by Umit Akdag, in the 68th minute. Thus, Romania won the group, with 22 points, followed by Finland, with 20 points. The winners of the 9 groups and the best 3 teams placed in 2nd place qualify directly for the final tournament. The last three places in the tournament will be occupied after a play-off between the other 6 teams in the second places. Slovakia, the host country, is directly qualified for the final tournament, which will take place between 12 and 29 June 2025.
Romania thus succeeds the fourth consecutive qualification to a final tournament for players under 21. In these last years, the greatest performance of the youth team was the qualification in the semifinals of the European Championships held in 2019, in Italy and San Marino. At the time, the young Romanian players missed the qualification in the last match of the competition after being defeated by Germany 4-2.
