fire group variant

In Brussels, Belgium, UEFA today organizes the draw for the groups of the next edition of the Nations League.

Mihai Stoichiță, president of the Technical Commission of the Romanian Football Federation, and Ionel “Jerry” Gane, second coach of the first national team, will be present in the Palais 3 Expo Hall from Romania. The selector Mircea Lucescu has health problems and is going to go abroad for further investigations.

LIVE at 19:00 » The draw for the Nations League groups

The urns from group B:

• Urn 1: Scotland, Hungary, Poland, Israel

• Urn 2: Switzerland, Bosnia, Austria, Ukraine

• Urn 3: Slovenia, Georgia, Ireland, Romania

• Urn 4: Sweden, North Macedonia, Northern Ireland, Kosovo

Given what the ballot boxes look like, here it is:

• A fire group variant for Romania: Scotland, Switzerland, Sweden

• A relatively affordable group variant: Israel, Bosnia, Northern Ireland

When leaving Romania, Mihai Stoichiță named the team he wants to avoid: Kosovo, especially in the context of the problems from the most recent direct match, abandoned by the Kosovars, also in the League of Nations.

“We are getting tired of these trips to Kosovo. They are good teams. I say that it is also an advantage that these matches give you more experience. It is a great gain of experience for the young players”, said Stoichiță, who showed confidence that the “tricolors” can achieve the same performance as in the previous edition, winning the group. Only now, in a higher league, the opponents are much stronger.

“The hopes are to succeed in doing what Lucescu did in the previous campaign, winning a group that will give us the possibility, if God forbid we do not qualify directly [la turnee finale]let's have a dam.

I said a few years ago that it is a friendly competition with an official character. It gives you the opportunity to reach where you couldn't from the group in two matches [de calificare]in which you had the opponents you had”, said the technical director of the Federation.

Only two windows for this campaign

The next edition of the Nations League comes with a novelty: the 6 games in the group stage will be played in only two international windows, the first in late September and early October, the other in November.

• Stage 1: September 24-26, 2026
• Stage 2: September 27-30, 2026
• Stage 3: September 30 – October 3, 2026
• Stage 4: 4-6 October 2026
• Stage 5: November 12-14, 2026
• Stage 6: November 15-17, 2026.

The Nations League is an emergency solution for teams that fail to qualify for the final tournaments from the preliminary groups.

This is what happened to Romania in this summer's World Championship qualification campaign: the “tricolors” missed the first two places in the preliminary group, but status as one of the best group winners in the Nations League gave them another chance, sending them through to the play-offs.