From Netherlands to San Marino

Much has been and will be written from now on about Romania’s performance in the final. After 0-0 draws with Bulgaria and Liechtenstein, the impressive performances in the qualifiers were quickly forgotten, perhaps unfairly. The emotion of the final impression remains important in our sport, and this badge always has two faces.

Recent experiences have made us see more of our shortcomings than our achievements, and we feel the same way, as if nothing could be better than it is now. This form of football nostalgia divides generations between triumph and disappointment, between almost everything and not nothing, between “it would have been nice” and “it would have been better if we hadn’t qualified”.

There is still a long way to go from the nightmare that has returned England to Albania, because the football eternity between London and Tirana is also a mirror of our rise and fall. It’s just that when you get to a place where even hope no longer spins on its axis, you understand that you don’t even have to try to be who you once were.

However, it is important to try to be something and then try to achieve some meaning. That’s what I left behind as a microbiologist in the national team. It makes me happy, believe, hope and feel. Feeling that it means something again, it awakens the vibrations of the national spirit. Feeling that we can love our national team again, that what we experienced in Germany was a privilege for us as spectators, earned through them. No one can take that away from us. Well done, Romania!

Romania’s national team exceeded expectations at Euro 2024

It’s just that time and football don’t stand still, the only tangible horizon is the future, not the present. In the future, we will resume European duels among club teams of different levels and UEFA Champions League qualifiers of different sizes. Isn’t it a bit short from Amsterdam to Serravalle this time? Quite a difficult transition Van Dijk, De Bruyne, Depay and Lukaku In Battistini, Golinucci or Soprani. Or maybe it was just an exercise in perspective, an exercise in starting from the first minute of the European season.

Of the 28 countries that had teams participating in the first qualifying round of the Champions League, only five had national teams participating in the European Championship. Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania and Georgia. All of these countries (perhaps Slovakia doubts this) have weaker internal competition than ours, and none of them can come close to Romania’s past performance, at least in the current form of state organization.

Our new European season starts next week, before the most important tournaments of the summer are over. The problem with Romanian football over the past 45 years is that good results at club level rarely go hand in hand with good results for the national team, and vice versa. If in the 80s Craiova, Steaua and Dinamo had great careers in Europe, the national team only managed to reach the finals.

In the 1990s, under capitalism and democratic principles, and with the internal divisions seriously weakened, Romania could only survive football through the national team. Existence, insistence on being ourselves, made us great. In the following decade, the decline of the tricolore was compensated as much as possible by the good performances of the club teams.

An abyss ensues, and the gap between what we are doing at the sporting level and what we should be doing seems insurmountable and unbearable. Euro 2024 places our hopes on a pedestal that is currently unstable but needs to be consolidated step by step, level by level. Because now it will be Virtus and Neman Grodno, and later in the fall it will be Cyprus, Kosovo and Lithuania.

The sense of values ​​is something we seem to have regained, and it is the main attribute we still retain after the European Cup. The present cannot be changed, it is a mirror of the past in sports and in life. But the future is also a mirror of the present, and it is important to achieve this in all aspects in order to grow healthily. Let’s understand who we are now and what we have to go through to be happy again and proud of ourselves through football. The story continues!