Romanian football fans have been quite vocal about the subpar performances
\nof Romanian footballers in the last two decades. Their point of reference is
\nthe 1990s, when Romania took part in every World Cup, managing in 1994, in the
\nUnited States, to reach the quarterfinals. It is the most notable result of
\nRomanian football. In turn, handball fans are equally disappointed with the
\ndefeat of Romania’s men’s team, a four-time world champion, in the 2022
\nEuropean Championship preliminaries in Bucharest. The Romanian team holds only
\nmathematical chances of qualifying, but have managed a historic
\ncounterperformance of only drawing against Kosovo. Losing five goals behind to
\na team whose federation was set up just a few years ago is humiliating, Radu
\nVoinea, a world champion in 1974 and a medalist at the Olympic Games in 1972,
\n1976 and 1980 said. Humiliating, but not painful, says Alexandru Dedu, the
\npresident of the Romanian Handball Federation, who is getting a lot of
\ncriticism these days. Another former handball legend, Vasile St\u00e2ng\u0103, two-time
\nbronze medalist at the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games, said that, if the Romanian
\nwomen’s team also misses the chance to qualify to the Olympic Games, then the
\nwhole Federation leadership should be sacked. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A week after the embarrassing
\ndefeat of the men’s team, the women’s team also ranked last in the tournament
\nheld in Montenegro, also involving the participation of the host country and
\nNorway. People are already talking about a failed generation, that of the
\n32-year-old left wing Cristina Neagu, who has been designated best handballer
\nin the world on several occasions. With Neagu as captain, Romania hasn’t won a
\nsingle trophy in the last decade, despite the fact that women’s handball is
\nstill breathing. Women’s clubs are still getting good results in European
\ninter-club competitions, and the Romanian national women’s team is faring
\ndecently, while men’s handball is in intensive care. The absence of handballers
\nhave stretched thin Romania’s delegation to the Tokyo Olympics. Chances of
\ngetting a medal are also reduced significantly. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In other news, the four
\nRomanian athletes who this weekend competed in the pre-Olympic Greek-Roman
\nwrestling tournament in Budapest, were knocked out in the preliminary rounds.
\nTo qualify to the Tokyo Olympics, our athletes needed to reach the finals. So
\nfar, only Alina Vuc will represent Romania in the 50-kg category in the Olympic
\nwrestling event, after having won silver at the World Championships in
\nKazakhstan in 2019. Romanian wrestlers have one last chance of qualifying to
\nthe Tokyo Olympic Games at the world pre-Olympic tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria,
\nto be held over May 6-9.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Romania’s women’s handball team failed to qualify to the Tokyo Olympic Games<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":88244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[40208,40209,36291],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-88366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-romanian-handball","tag-romanian-wrestlers","tag-tokyo-olympics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n