Article by Aurelian Botezatu – Published Sunday, November 16, 2025, 4:10 p.m. / Updated Sunday, November 16, 2025, 4:10 p.m.
The Romanian national team could meet Italy in the play-off for the 2026 World Cup, whose draw will take place on Thursday. The matches are scheduled in March.
From third place in Group H, regardless of what happens in the final round of preliminaries scheduled for Tuesday, the tricolors enter the March play-off on the Nations League route. Only they will be in the fourth urn at the drawwhich means that they will meet an extremely strong away opponent in the semi-finals.
At the moment, the most likely opponents coming from pot 1 are Italy, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland. The scenario is not one nailed down, it can change in the last round of the preliminaries, but the chances are very small for the appearance of surprises.
Gazzetta dello Sport: “Romania cannot and must not scare us”
Ahead of Thursday's draw, the Italians have reviewed their possible opponents. And Gazzetta dello Sport believes that the Azzurra Squad should not be afraid of Mircea Lucescu's team.
Even if Romania is led by a very good connoisseur of Italian football, who coached for years in Serie A and Serie B, Italian journalists do not see how we could confuse them.
“They can't and shouldn't scare Northern Ireland, less scary far from Belfast, and Romania, punished 3-1 by Bosnia yesterday”writes the prestigious profile daily from the Peninsula on Sunday.
The Romanian national team shone only in the first half against Bosnia
Mircea Lucescu's players had a good first half in Zenica, also awarded on the scoreboard, thanks to Bîrligea's goal (min. 17). But at the restart, they were unable to rise to the same level. And after Dzeko equalized immediately after the break (min. 49), came the elimination of Denis Drăguș (68).
In the end, ours got hit after hit. Bosnia took advantage on the scoreboard through Bajraktarevic's Eurogoal (min. 79), and Tabakovic closed the scoreboard in overtime (90+4), with a score of 3-1.
