Sports roundup

The latest from handball, football and table tennis

Steliu Lambru, 04.12.2023, 13:45

The Romanian women’s national handball team has qualified for the main groups of the World Championship to be held in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In the second match of group E, Romania beat Serbia 37-28 with 19-13 at halftime. In the first match of the group, played on Friday, Romania beat Chile 44-19. The next match of the Romanians will be against Denmark.

The draw for the final tournament of the 2024 European Football Championship, hosted by Germany, took place on Saturday in Hamburg. Romania was assigned to group E, together with Belgium, Slovakia and the winner of the play-off B. The last component of the group of which Romania is also part of will be decided after the play-off matches between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Ukraine and Israel and Iceland. Romania will attend the final tournament of the European Championship for the sixth time, after the editions of 1984, 1996, 2000, 2008 and 2016. In 2000, the Romanians qualified for the quarter-finals, their best record to date.

As for the results in local football, the 18th stage of the Romanian Super League, after the matches played on Friday, are: FC Voluntari – Petrolul Ploiesti 0-0 and Politehnica Iași – Farul Constanța 2-3. The results after the matches played on Saturday are: UTA Arad – FC Hermannstadt 2-0, FC Botoșani – Rapid Bucharest 0-0, CSU Craiova – CFR Cluj 1-0. Finally, the results on Sunday: Universitatea Cluj – FCU Craiova 2-1 and FCSB – Oțelul Galați 0-2. The last match will see Sepsi Sfântu Gheorghe up against Dinamo Bucharest. FCSB tops the table with 37 points, followed in second and third places by CSU Craiova and CFR Cluj respectively, with 32 points each.

Romanian Elena Zaharia won silver in the women’s singles event at the World Table Tennis Championships for U19 juniors. In the men’s singles, Eduard Ionescu won the bronze medal. Two other bronze medals were won by the Romanian women’s and men’s teams. (EE)