Romania complete the field for EHF EURO 2018 Qualification

Having missed the main qualification phase for the EHF EURO 2016 has remained a single failure for Romania's men's national team. 

Two years after their surprise play-off loss to Finland relegated them to the first qualification phase for the EHF EURO 2018, Romania are back among Europe'a 28 top handball nations, becoming the last team to progress to the EHF EURO 2018 Qualification with a 32:21 (17:10) second leg play-off win against Israel.

After Finland and Belgium had won their respective play-off encounters already on Saturday, Romania left no doubt on Sunday that they and not their opponents Israel would proceed to the next stage.

Four days after they had won the first leg away 30:27, they also won the second leg in confident fashion.

Israel miss the final qualification stage for a Men’s EHF EURO event for the first time since 1996. In the same year, Romania had their last appearance at a Men’s EHF EURO Final Tournament.

The match in Calarasi was close until the 22nd minute when the score stood at 11:10, but then Romania went for the early decision by scoring six unanswered goals until the half-time break score of 17:10.

The closest Israel got in the second half was within five goals at 15:20, but overall they lacked the power and were constantly trailing by six to eight goals and in the final stages of the game Romania even double-figured the gap.

Andrei Mihalcea, Dragos Oprea Ionut Ramba and Iuliu A. Csepreghi all scored four times each for Romania, while Ram Tutkenitz was Israel's top scorer with five goals.

Draw in Dubrovnik

The EHF EURO 2018 Qualification draw takes place on Thursday, 14 April, at 10:30 hrs local time and will be broadcast live via the EHF EURO Youtube channel and on the official website, www.ehf-euro.com.

According to the current national team ranking the participating nations have been seeded in the following pots

Pot 1: France, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Iceland

Pot 2: FYR Macedonia, Russia, Norway, Hungary, Slovenia, Belarus, Austria

Pot 3: Serbia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Netherlands, Portugal, Lithuania

Pot 4: Slovakia, Latvia, Ukraine, Switzerland, Romania, Belgium, Finland