Romania – Albania

Romania and Albania will meet on neutral venue in Switzerland in a match between two teams that have failed to qualify for the World Cup.

Despite not reaching Brazil and being heavily criticized in the media, Romania had a solid qualifying campaign, finishing second in a nightmarish group with Netherlands, Turkey and Hungaria. Indeed, the romanians were a little lucky to get that playoff spot and went on to lose to Greece with 4-2 aggregate, but it was overall a successful campaign. Now Romania will look to build for Euro 2016, where they are expected to qualify with the new 24 team tournament, and their last game vas really impressive: a 0-0 friendly draw against Argentina in Bucharest. Morale is pretty good, there have been changes in the football federation, the team has good chemistry and is decent quality wise. I would also state that Romania has a very good coach – always criticized for his questionable character (I dislike him myself), but he is a good tactician had fantastic results with this team compared to other managers, so the point is things are pretty good at the Romanian National team right now.

Albania did not surprise anybody in the World Cup qualifying campaign, they finished 4th in the group behind Switzerland, Iceland and Norway and played the same defensive football, scoring less than 1 goal per game in average. Albania won just one of their last 6 games, it was a 2-0 home win against Malta in the last match they played two months ago.

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Team news & lineups

Victor Piturca has called up a lot of young players for this game, but the first 11 will be very close to the usual best one, with only 2 or 3 changes. Albania will also field a pretty strong lineup, but not the absolute best one. Romania will probably look like shown below (brackets are for the players that are not normal regulars, showing their usual status). There could of course be 2 or 3 changes to this formation.

 Romania: Tătăruşanu – Cr. Manea (17 year old debutant), Chiricheş, D. Grigore (3rd choice CB), Raţ – Pintilii, C. Lazăr (3rd choice DM) – Maxim, Chipciu, Cr. Tănase (2nd choice RW) – Marica

I really fancy Romania to win this game. I feel the team is a little underrated at the moment. Romania easily has more quality than Albania and is in much better form too – both short term and long term. A very important factor is that Romania is well known to be extremely strong in friendly matches, taking them very seriously – in recent years they defeated Greece, Switzerland or Belgium, drew with Argentina and lost just once in the last 11 international friendlies they played. Considering Romania is the better team (by a sensible margin), in better form, has good morale and is a friendly specialists, I can’t see Albania taking anything from this game. They would have a chance at home, but on neutral venue their odds do not look too good. Albania does not seem to have the firepower to score here, while Romania should be able to put pressure and get at least one or two goals, though I expect three. My tip is Romania to win with -1 asian handicap. Prediction: Romania – Albania 3-0.

Pick: Romania (-1 Asian Handicap)
Odds: 2.34 @ Pinnacle
Stake: 10
Possible profit: 13.4
Event date: 31 May