Hungary vs. Romania (Prediction)

Prediction

Hungary vs. Romania

Friday, March 22nd 2013, 19:30 CET

With World Cup qualifications coming our way during this weekend, the internet will start offering different World Cup predictions for the games from all continents, making it easier to choose your favorite to bet on. For the upcoming game I’m going to present you, I found the best odds at  888sport.

The game I’m going to focus on is between Hungary and Romania, two teams from group D of the European qualifications, which have had much better results than anyone would have expected at the beginning of the stage of qualification. Both teams won all their games up until now, and only lost to The Netherlands, who are the obvious favorites of the group.

Hungary is not in an ideal shape, as their home league only started several weeks ago, and some games were postponed due to terrible weather conditions. One of their key players, Tamas Hajnal, is not playing for Stuttgart that much, Zoltan Gera is injured and Roland Juhasz recently left Anderlecht. Romania’s team is mostly based on players from Steaua Bucharest, who had an amazing run in Europa League, up until they faced Chelsea London and obviously lost. Everyone seems to be counting on Adrian Mutu to score, but considering he’s not in his best shape, I would say Gabriel Torje or Bogdan Stancu have the same chances to score in Budapest.

In their last six head to head games, Romania won four times scoring 8 goals, two games ended with a draw and Hungary only scored once. It would make sense if they were extra motivated to win against their neighbors. Both teams have the same number of points, but Romania is on the third place because of the goal difference, as they scored only eight goals as opposed to Hungary’s ten goals.

In the past few years, Hungary had problems in attack, but now the situation is reversed, their midfielders always manage to create chances to score, but the defense is severely lacking, especially on the left wings. Romania had fairly the same characteristics, the only peculiarity could be the fact that sometimes they manage to close off their defense if the score is satisfying for their needs.

The game on Puskás Ferenc Stadion will be played with closed doors, as a result of FIFA’s disciplinary committee suspension for a game, because of display of offensive symbols during their game with Israel. Romania’s manager, Victor Piturca said: “I will miss the absence of supporters, but there one small advantage, that the players will be able to hear the input I might give them during the game.” He also mentioned that the Hungarian team is very strong, whereas Romania is technical, so they will try to compensate their faults by being good strategists, as everyone still remembers Hungary’s comeback in their game with Turkey, when they were losing 0-1, only to end up winning the game with 3-1.

In the meantime Egervari Sandor, Hungary’s manager expressed his desire to have his team play a good game, adding “This is not a game for 3 points; considering the rivalry between the teams, it will be a game for 6 points.”

Another interesting fact is that the Romanian team has 5 players with yellow cards – Alexandru Bourceanu, Gabriel Tamas, Razvan Rat, Dorin Goian and Gheorghe Grozav – and if they get cautioned again they are missing the crucial game against Holland in Amsterdam.

I’m going to bet 6 units at 2.87 on Romania’s victory with the odds from 888sport.

Romania to win at 2.87.