WRAPUP 1-Wasteful Switzerland edge closer to knockout phase

The Swiss, who owe their point to Admir Mehmedi’s second-half strike, have four points from two games while Romania have one after Bogdan Stancu opened the scoring in the first half.

Romania boss Anghel Iordanescu claims his side are suffering due to their busy Euro 2016 schedule after a 1-1 draw with Switzerland.

It leaves them with just one point from two matches, although with their final game to come against minnows Albania, they will still have high hopes of qualifying for the knock-out stages. At that stage, and for a while longer, they were finding it hard to cope with the pace of Romania’s heavily improvised attacking play and even after equalising they could not completely subdue opponents who will, as their coach confirmed, still fancy own chances of beating Albania to make the knockout stages too.

“We want to win against France like we want to win every game”, he said. “We created so many chances to score”.

Stoke City’s Xherdan Shaqiri increasingly became a thorn in the Romanians’ side but he should have done better with two second-half free kicks. “We suffered a lot during the second half and were facing huge pressure from Switzerland”.

Switzerland captain Stephan Lichtsteiner grabbed Alexandru Chipciu’s shirt in the area and Stancu converted the resulting penalty, putting Romania ahead in the 18th minute against the run of play.

Taking a pass in his stride and turning Vlad Chiriches in the sixth minute, the forward sent an effort flying past the far post, before shooting tamely at Ciprian Tatarusanu 10 minutes later.

After the rather morale busting manner of their opening night defeat by the hosts, Romania picked up themselves well enough here but despite some strong spells, they were again second best overall and they rode their luck early on when Haris Seferovic passed up a couple of fairly glorious chances to put his side in front. Two minutes later, Tatarusanu tipped Fabian Schaer’s fierce 20-metre volley over the bar as the game got livelier.

Romania nearly doubled their lead when the ball fell kindly to right back Cristian Sapunaru, who cracked an effort onto the outside of the post, and deservedly took their slender advantage into the break.

Switzerland had a wonderful chance to draw level in the 38th minute when Lichtsteiner found the head of Blerim Dzemaili with a super cross from the right, but the midfielder somehow missed the target from close range.

Switzerland continued to push and coach Vladimir Petkovic substituted Seferovic just past the hour mark for 19-year-old Breel Embolo, who had no impact in a disappointing performance.