Article by Adrian Duţă – Published Tuesday, November 11, 2025, 11:11 p.m. / Updated Tuesday, November 11, 2025, 11:21 p.m.
Ladislau Boloni (72 years old), the former great international, criticized the players of the Romanian national team, 4 days before the match with Bosnia, in the World Championship preliminaries.
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Bosnia – Romania will be played on November 15, from 21:45, in Zenica. The match will be liveTEXT on GSP.ro and broadcast on Prima TV
Boloni believes that the national team's players must make up for their mistakes in these preliminaries at the match in Zenica, which represents the last chance for ranking in the top two places. With a failure, Romania is mathematically excluded from the calculations for the first two positions.
The former national team coach sent a tough message to the players, stressing that he wants to push them for the results of these World Cup qualifiers.
Ladislau Boloni: “I want to poke the players. If 1-0 with Austria is special, you deserve to be afraid in Bosnia”
“Our backs are against the wall. How many chances do we have? I'm not good at math. I want to poke the players a little bit. So far, this national team has not made any special results. I'm talking about now, after the EURO. Is beating Austria special? If 1-0 with Austria is special, you deserve to be afraid in Bosnia.
I lost at home. It would be the time that the boys, and I don't want to touch Mircea, but it would be the time for the players to feel that it is time to correct the mistakes. Losing with Bosnia is a mistake, drawing a draw with Cyprus is a mistake that needs to be corrected. Maybe there is tension and nervousness in my accent, it really is.
You can't qualify for Worlds if you don't do more than you're capable of. I want to believe that the players feel the responsibility and want to do in such a way as to correct the mistakes they have made. The boys are facing a debt and have to pay it“, said Boloni on “Footbal Club”, from Digi Sport.
The situation in Romania's group
Mircea Lucescu's team is in 3rd place in group H, with 10 points in 6 matches. Austria is the leader, with 15 points, Bosnia is in 2nd place, with 13 points. After the match in Zenica, the “tricolori” will face San Marino, in Ploiesti, in the last stage of the preliminaries.
If they finish in 2nd place, Romania will go to the play-off for the World Cup. If they finish lower, they will play in the play-offs thanks to winning their Nations League group, but the route would be more difficult than if Lucescu's side finished 2nd.
In 1st place, which ensures direct qualification to WC 2026, the chances are purely theoretical, Austria having 5 more points and a much better goal difference, +16 versus +5.
