Sports Weekend

Florin Orban, 03.09.2021, 20:16

Romania’s national eleven clinched a 2-0 away win against Iceland on
Thursday in a match counting towards the Group J of the World Cup 2022
preliminaries.

The win comes after four consecutive defeats in two official games
against Germany and Armenia, and two friendlies against England and Georgia.

Dennis Man put Romania in the lead on 47 minutes and Nicolae Stanciu
added a second 7 minutes from time. The trainees of headcoach Mirel Radoi have
thus taken revenge after the 1-2 defeat last autumn in Reykjavik in the playoffs
for EURO 2020.

The Romanians seemed to have had a good control over the game and their
technical superiority was visible with bold and speedy actions almost all
throughout the match. Dennis Man put the
visitors into the lead after the break, then Ianis Hagi fired home on the 70th
minute, shortly after his entry but had his goal cancelled for a
challenge. Romania sealed the points on the
83rd minute after Hagi had fed Stanciu and the latter scored the
victory goal for the visitors.

We can say the match
against Iceland has been the best show put up by the Romanians since Mirel
Radoi took the helm. Now our footballers need to prove the game in Reykjavik
was not an accident and they can do it against Lichtenstein in Bucharest on
Sunday.

They will next take on North Macedonia in Skopje on Wednesday. Until
then Romania continues to rank fourth in Group J with only 6 points. Armenia
tops the table with 10 points, followed by Germany with 9 and North Macedonia
with 7. Iceland is last with 3 points. At the end of the preliminaries, the
first side in the group’s ranking is qualified whereas the second side goes
into playoffs.

(bill)