The interest for the European Championship in France is rather low in Romania. Only little over half (53%) of the 1,057 respondents to an IRES survey said they were interested in this competition.

One in four (26.5%) Romanians who are interested in football believe that Romania’s national team will beat hosts France in the opening match of the Euro 2016 tonight while 30% expect France to win the match. The remaining 43% believe the match is going to end in a draw, according to a survey conducted by local social research institute IRES.

Almost a quarter (24%) of the respondents interested in Romania’s games at the Euro 2016 said they expected the match to end 1-1. Some 12% expect France to win 2-1 while 11% believe the score will be 2-1 for Romania.

However, only 61% of those interested (about a third of the total respondents) know details about Romania’s participation at the Euro 2016, and could name at least one team in Romania’s group. Some 60% of them believe that Romania will finish second in Group A, 25% think that Romania will be third, but there are also 8% who think Romania has a shot at first place.

Half (48%) of the respondents interested in Euro 2016 believe that Romania will make it out of the group stage and be eliminated in the first know-out round, 18% believe Romania will reach the quarter finals, 10% see the team in the semifinals, and 5% aim for the final. Some 3% see Romania as the surprise winner of this year’s tournament, but 8% expect the team not to pass group stage.

More than half of the group (55%) don’t know who Romania’s captain is and a quarter (24%) don’t know the coach. However, 70% could correctly name Anghel Iordanescu as Romania’s manager while 30% knew that Napoli’s defender Vlad Chiriches is Romania’s captain at the Euro.

The survey was made on June 9 on a sample of 1,057 respondents over 18.

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editor@romania-insider.com