Group E is perhaps the most bizarre group since the start of the European Championship: just looking at the strength on paper, Belgium is in an absolute leading position in it, and the positioning of one super and many strongs allows them to easily cope with the schedule of the group stage.
– Even if they lost their opening game to Slovakia, the Belgians were lucky until the third round of the group stage: if they won the group in the final round, they would face the Netherlands, who were also not in great form, and the winner of the quarter-finals against Austria and Turkey: Belgium won the group by winning the group and winning the group, compared to the arrangement of strong teams in the first half of the group.
But in the final round of the group stage, the Belgian was still disappointed. After the second round ended the strange situation of four teams with three points, the two games in the third round, the four teams got two more draws, and the four teams accumulated four points after three rounds, in this delicate situation, Ukraine became the fourth team with the highest points, and the Romanian became the biggest winner, winning the group and getting excellent luck, and reached the knockout stage of the European Championship again after 24 years.
Once upon a time, Romania also wrote its own story in the world of professional football. Haji made a name for himself at the '94 World Cup, becoming a well-known midfielder in football and a Carpathian Maradona, but his personal brilliance could not change the fate of Romania, and the Eastern European side became a marginal player in football, just like their national fortunes. Today, Hadji's son, Yanis Hajj, has grown up and inherited the Romanian number 10 shirt, but at this European Championship, this Romanian team has proved that Romanians can go on without individual brilliance.
On their European Championship debut, Stanciu and Marin were all in the thick of the game, but it was the Romanians' tenacity that really touched them: they managed just 29 per cent possession in the game, allowing the Ukrainians to clean up 13 shots and 29 per cent possession, the lowest of any European Cup winner since 1980.
After that, the Romanians fought hard and eventually lost 2-0 to Belgium. They had just nine shots on goal in the third game, and the Romanians would have risked going home had it not been for Marin's life-saving penalty – it might not have been a good idea to qualify in such a negative game, but from Romania's point of view, no one has the right to blame them: after all, they have only won two games in the European Championships in total, and it would have been a great honour for them to qualify from the group.
Because of the possibility of qualifying for the third place in the group, many people will complain about the format of the European Cup, believing that it reduces the intensity of the game. However, it is also because of this format that a small team like Romania has the possibility to touch the dream, and for the increasingly golden world of football, the dream of a small team is also precious.
Of course, Romania are still at the level of being able to get out of a complex group: they have less than 39% possession per game, they are excellent defensively in positional battles, they can switch between four and five while maintaining the width of the midfield defence, and they don't have many tricks in attack, but they are amazingly efficient, scoring an average of one goal from eight shots, and no matter how far they can go in the knockout rounds, Romania will be an opponent to be reckoned with.
(The original address of this article: Lao Miao, a commentator on the public account)