Romania in the World Cup Play-Offs

After 2-0 against Estonia in Bucharest, Romania qualified into the football World Cup playoffs, after a 12-year absence. Still, there is a long way to the final tournament in Brazil.

Bogdan Matei, 16.10.2013, 13:13

Reserved joy accompanied Tuesday night the qualification of Romania’s football squad into the play-offs for next year’s World Cup in Brazil. In qualifying Group D, dominated by the Netherlands, the Romanian players came in second, with 19 out of 30 points. But what secured their qualification was not so much their own wins, in the last two games, against Andorra and Estonia, but rather the Netherlands’ defeating the other contenders for second place, Hungary (8-1) and Turkey (2-0).

In fact, the Romanian fans attending the match were more loudly cheering the Dutch goals in Istanbul than the ones scored by the national team in Bucharest. Similarly, the leitmotif in the Romanian sports press was “Thank you, the Netherlands!” The draw for the seeded play-offs, which will send the last four European teams to Brazil, is to take place on October the 21st, with the two legs scheduled for November 15th and 19th.

Romania will not be a seed in the play-offs, and will play against Portugal, Ukraine, Croatia or Greece. According to commentators, except perhaps for Greece all the possible contenders are stronger teams than Romania’s current national squad, and the chances of securing a ticket to Brazil are rather slim. Romania hasn’t played in a World Cup final tournament for 15 years, after the so-called “golden generation” led by the famous player Gheorghe Hagi had clinched all final tournaments in the ‘90s and had gone as far as the quarter-finals in 1994. The decline started in 2001, when, coached by the same Hagi, Romania was beaten by Slovenia in the play-offs for the World Cup hosted by Japan and South Korea. Since then, Romania has only reached the final tournament of the Euro 2008, when, after a modest performance, it was knocked out of the group stage.

The distrust of the media and fans is fueled by the overall mediocrity in Romanian football today. Whereas the footballers in Hagi’s generation played for Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan or Ajax Amsterdam, the members of today’s national team have problems getting signed up by even second-rank teams abroad. Headed by the increasingly unpopular Football Federation president Mircea Sandu, in office for 23 years, Romanian football agents and club owners are involved in high-level corruption scandals. This is why, ridiculous as it may seem, fans pin their hopes on the legendary good luck of coach Victor Piturca, known as a gambler, but also as the one who steered the national squad into the last two final tournaments, the Euro 2000 and 2008.