Romania suffered a tight defeat against Norway in the opening game, while Russia beat Croatia confidently. In their second round clash, the Romanians started better, taking an early lead. The Olympic champions from Russia struggled to find the way to the Romanian goal and Denisa Dedu came up with a fantastic performance: in the first 15 minutes, she had a 80% saving efficiency, helping her team to a 7-2 lead. As usual, Cristina Neagu was the leader of the Romanian attacks, scoring 5 goals until the halftime break. Despite the bad start, the Russians managed to fight their way back into the game. With a little more than a minute left, the Russians were only one goal behind, the half ended with a two-goal Romanian lead (11-9).
In the beginning of the second half, the Russians managed to equalize in 2 minutes, but they couldn’t take the lead. In this period, Eliza Buceschi was the savior of Romania: she scored four straight goals to keep her team in front. After the score reached 16-14 in the end of the 40th minute, the next ten minutes were all about the mistakes and the goalkeepers. Both Dedu and Kalinina closed the goal and no team was able to score for more than 10 minutes. It seemed to be decisive who could score after the big silence, and Russia was the team to break the “curse”. In the 52th minute, Russia equalized one more time but Romania always had a response: either in attack, or from Dedu. Cristina Neagu, despite not being able to score in the second half, found the back of the net twice in the most important moments, deciding the outcome of the match. Romania won 22-17.
EHF EURO 2016 – Group D – 2nd round
Romania – Russia 22-17 (11-9)
Romania: Cristina Neagu 7(1), E. Buceschi 7(3), C. Pintea 2, M. Geiger 2, A.M. Iuganu 2, O. Manea 1, A. Udristioiu 1
Russia: L. Postnova 4, D. Dmitrieva 3, A. Vyakhireva 3, D. Samokhina 2, A. Sen 2, K. Kozhokar 1, O. Gorshenina 1, V. Bobrovnikova 1
Penalties: 4/5 ; 0/2
Suspensions: 4 minutes ; 8 minutes
Player of the match: Denisa Dedu (ROU)
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