Romania qualified to the 2016 European Championship

Romanias national football team on Sunday qualified to the upcoming European Championship.

România Internațional, 12.10.2015, 13:53

After a break of 8 years, Romania has qualified directly to the European Championship to be hosted by France in 2016. On Sunday the Romanian footballers grabbed a 3-nil away win against the Faeroe Islands in the last fixture of preliminary Group F. The goals for Romania were scored by Constantin Budescu, on minutes 4 and 46 and by Alexandru Maxim on 82 minutes. After the game coach Anghel Iordanescu said Romanian football needed this qualification. His only regret was not obtaining the tickets to France sooner, after last week Romanian drew against Finland at home 1-all. The fans wanted to celebrate the qualification at home, and we have let them down, Iordanescu went on to say.

The Romanian headcoach congratulated Budescu for his first two goals for Romania, but highlighted the team effort throughout the entire campaign, as Romania lost no game and conceded only two goals. Iordanescu also gave credit to his predecessor Victor Piturca, who sat on the bench for the first matches of the qualifying campaign. Despite the low budget of the Federation and the numerous corruption scandals that marred its image, Romanian football obtained its fifth qualification to the European Cup, after playing in the editions of 1984, 1992, 2000 and 2008.

In 2000, Emeric Ieneis trainees reached the quarterfinals, marking the best performance of the Romanian team. The other Group F team to obtain qualification was Northern Ireland, who will play in a European Cup after a break of 30 years. Hungary ranked 3rd and holds good chances of qualifying directly to the 2016 European Cup, given that it has the best goal-average of all the teams ranking 3rd in the nine preliminary groups.

A total of 24 teams will play in the European Cup to take place between June 10 and July 10. Prior to 2012 only 16 teams played in the European Cup. So far a total of 16 teams have secured qualification to the European Cup: Albania, England, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Wales, adding to which is the host country France.