Romania Vs Ukraine: Tricoloroi's First Test

The Romanian national team will start working at Euro 2024 against Ukraine in the first match of Group E, Monday, June 17, 2024 (photo: INSTAGRAM @echipannationala)

JAKARTA Romania will start the group stage for Euro 2024 against Ukraine. The first match from Group E will take place at the Allianz Arena Stadium on Monday, June 17 at 20.00 WIB.

Romania was present in Germany with the title of group winner in qualifying. Meanwhile, Ukraine got a ticket to the finals of this tournament after having to go through the playoffs.

This is the sixth time Romania has appeared at the Euros or the first since the 2016 edition. In their last appearance, they finished at the bottom of the group with just one point from three matches.

Historically, the presentation of the team's victory nicknamed Tricolorii in the Euro finals was only 6 percent. This statistic shows that there is such a difficult task for Edward Iordanescu's team.

Their only big success in 16 games at the Euros was beating England in the 2000 edition. However, the team's results over the past year have shown a tremendous improvement.

That includes defeating Switzerland in the last qualifying match to top Group I without losing. Of the ten matches, they won six and drew four to increase confidence in Germany.

Statistics of conceding them during qualifying matches were also so good. They only conceded five goals and were able to shake the opponents' nets 16 times.

They show this defense capability again in the latest few friendly matches. In addition to the 2-3 defeat to Colombia, Tricolorii conceded only one goal in three matches against Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, and Liechtenstein.

Romania can confidently go through the preliminary round in groups containing Belgium, Slovakia and Ukraine. Moreover, there are four best third-placed teams in the group who are given ticket rations to complete the knockout round later.

On the other hand, this is Ukraine's fourth consecutive time making appearances at the Euros. However, on stage before this year they rarely get good results.

They lost eight of 11 matches and even failed to score in six of the group's nine matches. However, they managed to reach the quarter-finals three years ago.

Formation Estimated

Romania (4-2-3-1):Nita; Ratiu, Dragusin, Burca, Bancu; M. Marin, R. Marin; Man, Stanciu, Mihaila; Dragus

Ukraine (4-3-3):Lunin; Konoplya, Zabarnyi, Matviyenko, Zinchenko; Shaparenko, Stepanenko, Sudakov; Tsygankov, Dovbyk, Mudryk