The Steaua Versus Chelsea Football Match Preview

A look at the match pitting Steaua Bucharest against Chelsea London.

Florin Orban, 01.10.2013, 13:07

The Romanian football strongholds Steaua Bucharest tonight have the chance of a resounding comeback. Romania’ s champion team will go against English giants Chelsea London. We recall Chelsea this past spring ousted Steaua from the Europa League eighth finals. Subsequently Chelsea won the competition. Now the two squads are pitted against each other in Group E of the Champions’ League. Both teams have sustained defeats in the first round of the European competition. Steaua conceded a 3-nil defeat in their away game against Schalke 04 from Germany, while on home turf Chelsea lost to Swiss team Basle, 2-1.

For tonight’s confrontation in Bucharest, Cheslea cannot rely on one of their leading regulars: the Belgian Eden Hazard, who did not even travel to Bucharest. Steaua’s Mihai Pintilii ‘s presence on the pitch is uncertain, since yesterday Pintilii sustained an injury during the official training session. Neither Cristian Tanase has completely recovered, yet he is expected to be included among the regulars in tonight’s game.

The name of the skipper Steaua’s manager Laurentiu Reghecampf will throw on the pitch is also uncertain. We recall in the game against Schalke in Gelsenkirchen Steaua’ s lineup included the Greek Pantelis Kapetanos for that position. Tonight, however, the Italian Federico Piovaccari is likely to be spearheading Steaua’s attacking lineup.

Ahead of tonight’s game Steaua on home ground defeated Poli Timisoara, 3-nil, and holds the runner-up position in Romanian’s league one championship, on a par with Astra Giurgiu, but with a game which is still pending on their record sheet. As for Chelsea, they managed a 1-all draw away from home against Tottenham. At the moment Chelsea are 5th-placed in the Premiership.

In the other Group E game, German side Schalke 04 will take on the local side FC Basle on the latter’s ground.