Romania lost two important points at the beginning of the preliminaries for the Euro 2008 football championship as it only managed to report a 2-2 against Bulgaria on home turf this weekend. It held control of the most of the game with a 2-0 by minute 53 (Rosu, Marica), but could not prevent Bulgarian Martin Petrov to score twice in two minutes (82, 83).

That allowed Bulgarian coach Stoichkov to claim “Bulgaria was better today” and forced Romanian captain Mutu to admit he sees it all as a loss.

Romanian commentators put much of the blame on two players Romanian coach Piturca introduced in the second half of the game. While the first 11 were seen as a good choice, replacements Maftei and Cocis proved rather disastrous.

Maftei offered a gaffe that allowed the Bulgarians to score for a second time and missed a pass that almost allowed the rivals to score for a third time, had it not been for Chivu who prevented a third goal. And Cocis was involved in a futile fault that helped Petrov to score his first goal in minute 82.

It was the 36th match of the two teams, 21 of which were won by Romania and 9 by Bulgaria.