The black statistics of a failed campaign

Victor Piţurcă’s team cut all the negative records from the history of 87 years of the national team

Romania started as the second favorite of the group, after France and has already compromised its chances of qualification to the World Championship 2010 after only 4 matches. With only 4 points, if we have already at home with the adversaries France and Serbia, the "tricolors" may hope to a qualification only after SF scenery: to win all the matches up to the end, including at Belgrade and Paris, or to win 15 points in France and wait that Domenech’s team to loose in Serbia.

Why are we in this situation?

1. Because we didn’t win any of the first three matches we played at home, a single case in the 27 qualification preliminaries in which participated up to the present! The most similar situation like this one took place 6 years ago, when we lost Norway (0-1) and with Denmark (2-5), but we defeated Bosnia (2-0). Then we were very close to the play-off qualification, but we missed it, after we made a draw match with Denmark in the injury time of the match from Copenhagen.

2. Because we took 8 goals in 3 matches played at home, this has never happened in the preliminaries. Not even after all the matches played on their own field in a campaign! Even at the "qualifications" for Euro 2004 we have received up to the present the most goals at home, 6, after 3 matches.

3. Because it is for the first time when our chances to the qualification had been dashed after disputing 40% of the matches from the group, i.e. 4 of 10. A similar case took place in the qualification campaign for 1980, but then we were in the middle of the preliminaries, playing 3 matches from the total of 6.

Weak when they are playing away!
In order to go in South Africa we have to win at least 9 points away from the total of 12 points staked. Unfortunately, the statistics is not on or side taking into consideration that Mutu and Chivu’s generation has never won abroad in front of a strong adversary, such as France and Serbia. Besides, in the history of the national team we have only 3 great victories away: 2-0 in Yugoslavia (1977), 1-0 in Sweden (1983) and 1-0 in Portugal (1998).