Romanian sociologist, professor Alfred Bulai "brought to the ground" all the experts and analysts who after the Euro-2024 match Romania - Ukraine (3:0) elevated the Romanian national team to heaven.
"Our media audience, I don't mean fans but countless analysts or ex-footballers, were constantly charged with emotion and had social blindness. All of them were constantly lying to themselves. Why am I saying this? Let's start with the facts!
We had only one good game at the Euros, and that was against a modest team (against Ukraine in the opening match, 3-0 - ed.). How could you say that Romania gave a big surprise by beating Ukraine? We qualified for Euro 2024 from the first place in our qualifying group, while the Ukrainians had great difficulty getting to the tournament through the playoffs! So why was Romania considered the worst from the very beginning and Ukraine the best? It was normal to think that we would win this match without any problems, not to say that we could surprise.
But after this match, a new big lie spread in the public space that Romania is very strong. Because of "team unity". A new message was launched: we have a super team because we have an outstanding team. This is a typical example of Romanian exceptionalism: only we have a team and others don't! I think anyone can find about 10-15 teams at the Euros with a similar team spirit.
One of the few realistic analysts was Mircea Lucescu, while almost all the others lost touch with reality after the match with Ukraine. One of the problems of the Romanian team was outside of it - a cavalcade of all kinds of analysts and experts who maintained a kind of myth about the quality and performances of our players, even when we lost or played badly. We were led to believe that the performance of the Romanian national team at Euro 2024 was fantastic, that everything was good, that we actually had some great generation of footballers.
And remember Lucescu's answer after the match against Ukraine when asked if Romania would go far at this Euro? He said: "Let's talk about it later.
If you want to get good results, you constantly need people to show you your problems. But that's only if you don't want to get complacent and lie to yourself.
I don't believe in the chances of either this generation of Romanian footballers or the next. Why? Because we, as a society, should have a winning mentality. Not only in soccer, but also in international politics, in international society, in any field," Ziare quoted Bulai as saying.