France vs Romania Prediction, Betting Tips & Preview

Preview

Joel Amorim Jun 06, 2016 @ 01:13 am

Next Friday, 10th of June 2016, the tournament hosts France will measure forces with Romania at Stade de France in Saint-Denis for the opening match of the Euro 2016.

France are firm favourites to win Group A, where they will play against Romania, Switzerland and the debutants Albania.

After smashing Scotland by 3-0 last weekend, the French team are now 100% focused on next Friday’s match against Romania. The Eastern European team is usually a tough bone to chew and Didier Deschamps have certainly already warned his players about the difficulties they would be up against.

The France manager’s choices have been severely criticized recently, but it was Eric Cantona’s interview to an English newspaper that stirred up the racial grounds issue regarding Deschamps’ call-up. The former Manchester United legend, who always had a cold relationship with the French National head coach, suggested that Didier Deschamps might have left out some footballers, such as Karim Benzema and Ben-Arfa, due to racial grounds. Deschamps, on the other hand, gave instructions to his lawyers to sue Cantona over his racism claims.

With just a few days to go before the start of the tournament, France need to get rid of all these problems if they want to start their campaign off on the right foot.

As for Romania, the Eastern European team did great in clawing a place in the tournament and have proven to be an extremely complicated side to overcome after only being defeated twice in their last 21 matches.

After being defeated 4-3 by the Ukraine on a friendly match recently, Anghel Iordanescu’s men bounced back to smash Georgia by 5-1 last Friday. Romania have only conceded two goals during their Qualification campaign and have not been defeated on any of the 10 group matches they have taken part in. 66-year old Iordanescu is doing a fantastic job with the Romanian side and if they manage to maintain the same performance level from the Qualification round, they might be able to claw a place in the next stage of the tournament.

France

Stats: W-4 L-1 D-0

Recent Form - WWWWL

Romania

Stats: W-2 L-1 D-2

Recent Form - WLDDW

Possible Line-ups

France (4-3-3) – Lloris - Sagna - Rami - Koscielny - Evra - Kante - Pogba - Matuidi - Payet - Griezmann - Giroud

Romania (4-2-3-1) – Tatarusanu - Matel - Chiriches - Grigore - Rat - Hoban - Torje - Popa - Pintilii - Stanciu - Andone

Injury List / Suspended Players

France - None

Romania - Andone (hand injury - in doubt) - Chiriches (in doubt) - Hoban (in doubt)

Head-to-head matches:

League Positions