The other match to conclude Group E in the Euro 2024 tournament takes place in Frankfurt where we have the dream tie for the conspiracy theorists as Slovakia look to make it through to the knockout stage when they take on Romania.
As luck would have it for those theorists a draw would ensure both teams go into the knockout stages regardless of what happens in the other game and given how big that would be for each side you can understand why it is being touted.
Where to watch
If you want to follow the action and see if anything iffy goes on then you will need to tune into BBC2 to watch this one in the UK. The build-up begins at 4.45pm ahead of the 5pm kick off.
Slovakia
The primary aim for Slovakia when they qualified for this tournament was to make it through to the knockout stage. Ironically many expected that to happen purely because they had Romania in their group and now it would appear that they don’t even need to beat them in order to progress. That is because they already got most of the job done when they took care of Belgium in their opening game. They weren’t able to follow that up against Ukraine though hence why they need to avoid defeat here to be through.
In a way though Slovakia are in a fortunate position here. They beat Belgium in the opening game and that was a great result but at the same time they probably should have lost that match or at the very least drawn it. That isn’t their problem though but defeat to an average looking Ukraine side in that opening round of games does raise questions about how good Slovakia are. Usually we might get an answer here but perhaps this won’t be the match to judge them on.
Romania
Going into the tournament there was a lot of negative words written about Romania and I wasn’t particularly keen on them myself but they immediately rammed those words down the throats of everyone who wrote them with an emphatic win over Ukraine in their opening game. Even then they didn’t really get the credit that they deserved with the narrative being how ordinary Ukraine were in that match. More plaudits came their way for the effort they showed in defeat to Belgium in game two funnily enough.
It all means that actually Romania are in control of their own destiny. If they avoid defeat here they will be through to the knockout stages where either France or most likely Spain would be waiting for them but they would have achieved something special regardless of what happens from there. They have looked a lot better going forward than we expected heading into the tournament though and that will give them some encouragement.
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Team News
Francesco Calzona is yet to make a change to his team in this tournament and the general vibe is that he isn’t going to make any changes here either which means that 37-year-old Peter Pekarik will feature for a third time in a little over a week after just five appearances for his club all season.
Denis Alibec made his way back from injury to be able to come off the bench in the loss to Belgium at the weekend and he could be pushing for a start in this one in what would otherwise be an unchanged starting XI.
Betting
Unless you want to take the draw at a predictably shortened price then you need to be looking elsewhere for a bet on this match I would suggest. It might be that the conspiracy result doesn’t come to the fore but even if this match had everything on it, two sides who don’t score a lot of goals probably weren’t going to play out a classic so the draw would have been a runner anyway. I’ll look at an angle where a tame draw could still pay out.
That comes in the form of under 3 Asian cards. I readily accept that we might have the worst referee we could have had for this bet given that Daniel Siebert tends to dish cards out like confetti and showed nine yellows in his only previous match at this tournament between Georgia and Czechia. Despite that I don’t expect much intensity to this game. There is a heat warning for this part of Germany earlier in the afternoon so conditions won’t make for an energetic game while in their four matches so far in this tournament these two have been shown four cards in total. Much has also been said of the pitch in Frankfurt and it might be that the referee takes that into account should any strong tackles go in. I don’t expect many though so under for the cards will do me.
Tips
Back Under 3 Asian cards for a 3/10 stake at 2.05 with Bet365
