Football and money The game with France opens the way to 7,500,000 Euros

The matches against Luxemburg and France are essential for an eventual qualification to the tryouts for the Euro 2012 tryouts, but in particular for the purse of the Romanian Football Federation as well as for the wallet of trainer Victor Piţurcă. A double win would make Romania a contender for the second position in the group, which would mean a huge opportunity to enter the final tournament of the European Championship of Poland and Ukraine, which will take place next year. All of this is wishful thinking for the most part, as the Romanian team is playing rather unconvincingly, as proven by its game against San Marino, and the odds of winning against France are rather low.

A qualification in the Euro 2012 is the equivalent of at least 7,500,000 Euros, money paid out by the UEFA. After the Euro 2008, the Romanian Football Federation was paid 8,500,000 Euros by the UEFA alone, 7,500,000 Euros for attending, plus 500,000 Euros for each point gained (the draws against France and Italy). The presence in the European Football Championship will automatically entail new advertising contracts, like it did in 2008. Missing the qualifications, for the final tournaments of the World Cup and the European Cups of 2002, 2004 and 2006 - in a real string of disasters -, has placed the Federation in a very precarious financial situation. Things only improved in 2008 when the same Victor Piţurcă succeeded in getting the team to qualify for the championships of Switzerland and Austria. It needs to be said that Victor Piţurcă achieved the most recent three qualifications of Romania since 1998 (one with the junior team and two with the seniors team). Winners of the group playoffs and the teams that have the best second score in each group will qualify by default for the final tournament of Poland and Ukraine. The other teams that hold the second spot will have to play in knockout games, which will take place in November 2011.

The contract which Victor Piţurcă signed this summer with the Romanian Football Federation is extremely lucrative for him, if he achieves all his objectives. In the next four years he will be paid 420,000 Euros per season and the bonuses for qualifying are also generous. He will be paid about 35,000 Euros per month, and will receive several other bonuses as follows: 800,000 Euros for qualifying in the tournament of 2012, 500,000 Euros for the 2014 tournament and 350,000 Euros for qualifying in the Euro 2016 tournament. A simple calculation shows if he also gets good results, aside from merely qualifying for the tournaments, Victor Piţurcă could make as much as 946,250 Euros per season. In spite of these huge potential earnings, Victor Piţurcă is very skeptical: "The most important thing is the game against Luxemburg, even though I see it"s not being given the importance it deserves. Luxemburg is a very dangerous team. Everyone"s got us pegged as the winners, if we lose it will be a tragedy. Luxemburg made remarkable progress; I"ve seen their results as well. We have a very difficult game ahead of us; I hope we are going to do fine. We really should be worried about Luxemburg. We are not the team we once were, we will definitely have trouble. Still, I think we are above them. Physically, Luxemburg players are in great shape, perhaps even better than us. That is their weapon. If we don"t beat them, the match with France will be merely for historical purposes".

The game against Luxemburg will be played on Friday, September 2nd (20:30), and the one against France on Tuesday, September 6th, (21:30), which will provide the opportunity for the inauguration of the new National Stadium.