​After eight years of waiting, the Romanian football team is returning to the final tournament. The Tricolors qualified for the European Championship hosted by Germany in 2024, and one of the masters of this qualification was Janis Hagi. Betano compared his progress as the first representative of Romania in the mirror to the successful performances of Gheorghe Hagi, his father and leader of the Golden Generation.

Gheorghe Hagi, the first final tournament at 19!

On August 10, 1983, when he was only 18 years old, Gheorghe Hagi made his debut in the Romanian national team in a friendly match with Norway in Oslo (0:0). Ten months later, at the age of 19 years and four months, Gheorghe Hagi made his official debut at the final tournament in Romania’s match against Spain. He came on as a substitute and came on for the last 14 minutes in place of Romulus Gabor. The match ended with Romania, who were making their European Championship debut at the time, drawing 1-1 with Spain, and Mircea Lucescu was the youngest coach present at the European Championship hosted by the Hexagon. In the second match against the German national team, Gheorghe Hagi started and was replaced at halftime. Romania would lose (2-1) because Gheorghe Hagi didn’t get a single minute in the last game, lost by Portugal’s tricolors (1-0) and Romania went home after the group stage.

Golden generation with Hagi at the head

Since then, Gheorghe Hagi has taken three World Cup finals, all in a row between 1990 and 1998, and two other European Championship appearances, in 1996 and 2000 respectively.

Under the captaincy of Gheorghe Hagi, the Romanian national team achieved the most important results in history, reaching the quarter-finals of the World Cup in the USA in 1994 and passing the group stage of EURO 2000 for the first time, where the tricolors were eliminated by Italy in the quarter-finals of the final.

For Gheorghe Hagi, the match against Italy at EURO 2000 would be the 124th under the tricolor and the last in his international career.

The impressive career of the “king” of Romanian football: 35 goals scored for the Romanian national team and six participation in the final tournaments.

Of the 124 matches played by Gheorghe in the form of the first team, 20 were in final tournaments (12 at the World Cup and eight at the European Championship). Gheorghe Hagi scored three goals in finals tournaments, all at the World Cup, where he spent 1,036 minutes on the field. At the European Championship, he did not score goals and spent 551 minutes on the field. During his international career, Gheorghe Hagi played almost 10,000 minutes for the national team.

Janis Hagi, the soul of a new generation

Qualification at EURO 2024 it is the sixth ever continental tournament final for Romanian football and the first for a new generation that has emerged on the back of impressive progress at the European U21 Championship in 2019.

Then, with Janis Hagi on the pitch, the little tricolors reached the semi-finals, qualifying for the Olympic Games after decades of waiting.

Janis Hagi will be 26 years old in the summer of 2024, when he will mark his first participation in the final tournament of the senior national team.

Made his debut for Cosmin Kontra in the first match of the national team against Lithuania (3-0) on 17 November 2018, when he was 20 years and 26 days old, he has so far made 31 appearances for The Hague and scored four goals. Two of those came in the EURO 2024 qualifying campaign against Andorra and Israel.

Gheorghe Hagi was 35 years and four months old when he played at EURO 2000, Romania’s last finals tournament, and it is hoped that Janis will match his father’s appearances in major competitions. If Romania qualified for the next five finals, world and European, Janis Hagi would be 36 years old to have as many appearances as his legendary father.

Until then, Janis Hagi will have a chance in Germany 2024 to add Hagi’s name to the list of scorers at the European Championship for the first time.