Article by Maria Olteanu – published on Thursday, October 9, 2025, 17:21 / Updated Thursday, October 2025 17:22
Austria – San Marino and CYPRUS – Bosnia Herzegovinamatches in the Romanian group in the preliminaries CM 2026, take place from 9:45 pm, livetext on gsp.ro. The national team led by Mircea Lucescu does not play in this round, when he has scheduled a friendly against the Republic of Moldovafrom 9:00 pm.
The two matches in the group are extremely important in the ranking economy and the qualification equation at the final tournament. If Austria will not normally have any problem with San Marino, the only unknown being the difference in score, the duel Cyprus – Bosnia announces an interesting one and remains to be seen if the representative of Cyprus will manage to block the leader of Bosnia, as it happened a month ago at the match with Romania.
Live from 21:45 »Austria – San Marino
Live from 21:45 »Cyprus – Bosnia
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Click here for more details and statistics about the match
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broadcasting: Digi Sport 2, first sport 5
The ranking in group H
Calculation »How to qualify Romania directly at CM 2026
With 3 matches left in the qualification campaign, the selected prepared by Mircea Lucescu is in a complicated situation. The “tricolors” have accumulated only 7 points in the first 5 rounds and ranks 3rd in the group, under Austria and Bosnia, both with 12 points (with the mention that the Austrians played only 4 matches).
Directly at the World Championship, only the group winners qualify. With only 9 points left in the game, only one miracle would make Romania finish the series in the first place.
FRF calculations for Romania to qualify for CM 2026:
The first condition: “The tricolors need 9 points in the last three matches in the group”. On October 12, they will receive the visit of Austria, on November 15, they will play in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on November 18, the campaign at home, against the representative of San Marino, ends.
Then, The results of the results need to be in our favorfor Cyprus to confuse them on their own ground and on Bosnia and Austria, as it succeeded with Romania (2-2).
There are two sets of results that would smoothed the road of Romania to the first place:
1) Cyprus – Bosnia 1x (victory or equal); Cyprus – Austria 1 (Cyprus victory); Austria – Bosnia X (equal)
2) Cyprus – Bosnia 1x (victory or equal); Cyprus – Austria 1x (victory Cyprus or equal); Austria – Bosnia 2 (Victory Bosnia)
In the first scenario, Romania and Austria would conclude the group with 16 points, and Bosnia would reach a maximum of 14. In the second scenario, 16 points for Romania, maximum 16 for Austria, maximum 16 for Bosnia.
If there were equal points between Romania and one of the two opponents, or even between all 3, the separation will be made according to the general goal. At this moment, Romania is at +4, Austria at +7, Bosnia at +8.
