Romania’s Cinderella run is over at the ongoing Euro 2024 after being sent packing by Netherlands in the round of 16.
Cody Gakpo opened the floodlight of goals before Donyell Malen scored twice in the second half as the Netherlands defeated Romania 3-0 to secure a spot in the quarter-finals of Euro 2024.
Gakpo scored for the Dutch in the 20th minute and later assisted Malen for the second goal late in the second half and would latwr add the third to increase his tally on the evening.
Despite their recent struggles in world tournaments, the Dutch could have increased their goal margin further. Romania, who topped Group E, were unable to make an impact in what was only their second European Championships knockout match since their 2000 quarter-final against Italy.
Romania has reached the last 16 of the European championship for the first time in many years after playing out a 1-1 draw in their last Group E game on Wednesday.
Ondrej Duda scored first for Slovakia in the first 45 minutes but t Romania’s Razvan Marin equalised with a penalty before the interval.
Romania finished top having scored more goals than second-placed Belgium. the two other teams also finished on four points.
Slovakia went through in third place thanks to a superior goal difference to fourth-placed Ukraine.
Romania had only qualified once for the last 16 in their five Euro appearances, but Edward Iordanescu’s tenacious side have ended that long drought.
They responded to Iordanescu’s pre-match challenge to make “history” with a combative display fuelled by their army of vociferous fans, who turned the stadium into a sea of yellow.
After 24 years of not winning a single game at the European Championship, Romania on Monday afternoon returned to winning ways by defeating Ukraine 3-0 in group E opener.
The captain of the side, Nicolae Stanciu gave Romania a surprise lead inside 29th minute, finding the top corner with a brilliant strike from 20 yards out.
Upond resumption of second half, Razvan Marin then doubled the Tricolours’ lead with a long-range effort that squeezed under Ukraine goalkeeper Andriy Lunin inside 53 minutes.
Romania rounded off the scoring four minutes later when Denis Dragus tapped in Dennis Man’s cross from close range.
The last time Romania won at the Euros was in year 2000 where a late Ionel Ganea penalty helped them beat England 3-2 in the group stage.
Ukraine’s players are appearing in their first major tournament since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
Last week, their forward Mykhailo Mudryk said his family were facing Russian missiles “day and night” in his home city of Krasnograd.
Nigeria has evacuated 807 of its citizens from war-raged Ukraine as of Saturday.
The evacuees arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja in three flights.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the first batch of 450 Nigerians stranded in Ukraine arrived aboard Max Air flight 747 at 7:10 a.m., on Friday through Romania.
The second batch came aboard Air Peace Boeing 777-300 flight (APK7534) and arrived in Abuja with 183 passengers including kids through Warsaw.
The third batch of 174 evacuees arrived at 11.50 p.m. on Friday through Hungary.
Report says that many Nigerians and other nationals have fled Ukraine into neighbouring countries since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on its neighbour on Feb. 24.
The Federal Government approved the release of 8.5 million dollars on Wednesday for the immediate evacuation of at least 5,000 Nigerians fleeing the Russian-Ukrainian conflict zone to Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.
On Feb. 28, the Federal Government said Nigeria’s diplomatic mission had received 256 citizens from Ukraine at Bucharest, Hungary, Poland and Romania following the invasion.
The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) has been at the forefront of the evacuation.
England beat Romania 1-0 thanks to a Marcus Rashford penalty kick in their final pre-Euro 2020 warm-up match on Sunday.
But the game was once again marred by supporters booing the Three Lions for taking the knee.
Fans had jeered England players for showing support for the Black Lives Matter movement at the start of the 1-0 win over Austria earlier in the week.
But, with Gareth Southgate clearly explaining on Saturday that his team’s gesture was motivated by racial injustice rather than politics, boos were still clearly audible once more at the Riverside Stadium.
Potentially deflated by those fans’ blatant disregard for the team’s feelings, perhaps England’s rather subdued start in Middlesbrough had a straightforward explanation.
Southgate’s side did not pose much of a threat until Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Jadon Sancho hit the crossbar after the half-hour mark.
The visitors looked as much of an attacking threat as England, but good work from Jack Grealish earned a penalty kick with 22 minutes to go.
Rashford – captain for the day – converted with aplomb, with Jordan Henderson unable to follow suit from the penalty kick spot a little later.
Romania looked much sharper than England initially, with Denis Alibec shooting just wide of the top-right corner and Razvan Marin firing at Sam Johnstone following a flowing move.
Florin Nita in the visitors’ net had very little to do before having the bar come to his rescue in the 32nd minute.
It kept out a ferocious Calvert-Lewin header, and then again six minutes later as Sancho’s bending effort following a clever offload by Grealish had left the goalkeeper looking helpless.
But Romania still posed a threat at the other end, with Deian Sorescu testing Johnstone after being released in behind the suspect Tyrone Mings.
An encouraging aspect was the performance of Rashford, who after a difficult spell at club level, did well in the 62nd minute as he collected Calvert-Lewin’s lay-off.
He burst into the Romania half before shooting wide on the stretch after a lung-busting run.
Rashford was decisive soon after, however, coolly slotting in a penalty kick after Grealish —- who was fouled on five occasions more than anyone else —- found himself tripped by Tiberiu Capusa.
Henderson, introduced at half-time for his first outing since February, passed up the chance to make it 2-0 from the penalty kick spot as Nita saved his kick.
This had followed a foul on Calvert-Lewin by Vlad Chiriches.
That came hot on the heels of Johnstone producing a wonderful stop to thwart Andrei Ivan, with England ultimately settling for the 1-0 win.
England now turn their attention to the Euros, with their campaign beginning against Croatia at Wembley on June 13.
International investigators hunted Saturday for those behind an unprecedented cyber-attack that affected systems in dozens of countries, including at banks, hospitals and government agencies, as security experts sought to contain the fallout.
The assault, which began Friday and was being described as the biggest-ever cyber ransom attack, struck state agencies and major companies around the world — from Russian banks and British hospitals to FedEx and European car factories.
“The recent attack is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits,” said Europol, Europe’s police agency.
Europol said a special task force at its European Cybercrime Centre was “specially designed to assist in such investigations and will play an important role in supporting the investigation”.
The attacks used ransomware that apparently exploited a security flaw in Microsoft operating systems, locking users’ files unless they pay the attackers a designated sum in the virtual currency Bitcoin.
Images appeared on victims’ screens demanding payment of $300 (275 euros) in Bitcoin, saying: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted!”
Payment is demanded within three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received within seven days the files will be deleted, according to the screen message.
But experts and government alike warn against ceding to the hackers’ demands.
“Paying the ransom does not guarantee the encrypted files will be released,” the US Department of Homeland Security’s computer emergency response team said.
Manhunt for hackers behind global WannaCry Ransomware cyberattack underway
“It only guarantees that the malicious actors receive the victim’s money, and in some cases, their banking information.”
Experts and officials offered differing estimates of the scope of the attacks, but all agreed it was huge.
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the Helsinki-based cyber security company F-Secure, told AFP it was the biggest ransomware outbreak in history, saying that 130,000 systems in more than 100 countries had been affected.
He said Russia and India were hit particularly hard, largely because Microsoft’s Windows XP — one of the operating systems most at risk — was still widely used there.
French police said there were “more than 75,000 victims” around the globe, but cautioned that the number could increase “significantly”.
The virus spread quickly because the culprits used a digital code believed to have been developed by the US National Security Agency — and subsequently leaked as part of a document dump, according to researchers at the Moscow-based computer security firm Kaspersky Lab.
Microsoft said the situation was “painful” and that it was taking “all possible actions to protect our customers”.
It issued guidance for people to protect their systems, while taking the highly unusual step of reissuing security patches first made available in March for Windows XP and other older versions of its operating system.
US software firm Symantec said the majority of organisations affected were in Europe, and the attack was believed to be indiscriminate.
The companies and government agencies targeted were diverse.
In the United States, package delivery group FedEx said it was “implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible,” while French carmaker Renault was forced to stop production at sites in France, Slovenia and Romania.
Russia’s interior ministry said some of its computers had been hit by a “virus attack” and that efforts were underway to destroy it. The country’s banking system was also attacked, although no problems were detected, as was the railway system.
Germany’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn said its station display panels were affected. Universities in Greece and Italy also were hit.
China’s network information safety working group sent a warning to universities about the cyber-attack and the National Internet Emergency Center suggested that users update Windows security patches.
Shanghai’s Fudan University received reports that a large number of school computers were infected with the virus.
Kaspersky said it was “trying to determine whether it is possible to decrypt data locked in the attack — with the aim of developing a decryption tool as soon as possible.”
On Saturday, a cyber security researcher told AFP he had accidentally discovered a “kill switch” that could prevent the spread of the ransomware.
The researcher, tweeting as @MalwareTechBlog, said registering a domain name used by the malware stops it from spreading, though it cannot help computers already affected.
“If you have anything to patch, patch it,” the researcher said in a blog post. “Now I should probably sleep.”
A hacking group called Shadow Brokers released the malware in April claiming to have discovered the flaw from the NSA, Kaspersky said.
“Unlike most other attacks, this malware is spreading primarily by direct infection from machine to machine on local networks, rather than purely by email,” said Lance Cottrell, chief scientist at the US technology group Ntrepid.
G7 finance ministers meeting in Italy vowed to unite against cyber crime, as it represented a growing threat to their economies and should be tackled as a priority. The danger will be discussed at the G7 leaders’ summit next month.
In Britain, the attack disrupted care at National Health Service facilities, forcing ambulances to divert and hospitals to postpone operations.
“There will be lessons to learn from what appears to be the biggest criminal cyber-attack in history,” Interior minister Amber Rudd said.
“But our immediate priority as a government is to disrupt the attack, restore affected services as soon as possible, and establish who was behind it so we can bring them to justice.”
