Cav's Place

Last month I was saying that Rapid won’t find it easy to get past Viborg, so Romania may well be left without any team in the Final Four of the European League, and that proved to be the case, the matter being pretty much settled in the away match, which they lost by nine goals. Admittedly, they had turned things around back in qualifying, winning by 11 goals, away, after losing by six at home, but Viborg are an entirely different level of opponent, and while they fought back and won yesterday, it was only by six goals, and I’m sure that even that difference was what Viborg allowed, since if they’d have needed a smaller one they’d have probably obtained it.

At least Gloria Bistrita did amazingly well, winning by nine goals, and a total of ten if you add the away match. Admittedly, it was once again a matter of taking advantage of Ikast collapsing towards the end of the match, likely because they have so few players and can’t rotate them, since the match had been tight until halfway through the second half, in fact Ikast being ahead overall just before the collapse, but the fact remains that in the end it seemed easier than expected, so Romania does have two teams in the Champions’ League quarter-finals.
As I was also saying last month, however, the problem is that Gloria is facing Brest and, as expected, CSM once again ended up facing their “nightmare”, Esbjerg, who have met and knocked them out in the same stage in 2022, 2023 and 2025… And CSM’s form also seems unusually poor lately, having just lost their first match in the national league this season, to Gloria Bistrita, who also took the lead thanks to the result and only have to maintain their winning streak in the last four rounds to make sure that they’ll win the title, and then were also knocked out of the cup, in the quarter-finals, by SCM Ramnicu Valcea, after having reached the final each time since 2015 and only failed to win it in 2015, 2020 and 2021. Admittedly, there are three weeks to go before the Champions’ League quarter-finals, and CSM will play the second match at home, unlike Gloria, but… Like I said in the title, maybe I won’t be right about it, but at this point it seems likely that it’ll be yet another season without any Romanian team in the Champions’ League Final Four. And just like last year, that would mean no team in the Final Four of any continental competition.