Hagi out to prove a point

NO team have failed to live up to their billing more than Spain who arrived in England with a burgeoning reputation and have proved to be a team with limited ideas once they get near the opposition penalty area.

Indeed it is difficult to reconcile their possible qualification against Romania's certain dismissal after the first two matches in which Spain have twice had to score late goals to secure draws while the Romanians have had no luck at all.

Against France one goal keeping error lost them the match while they would have got a draw against the Bulgarians if the linesman had spotted that Dorinel Munteanu's shot off the bar had bounced a foot over the line before it rebounded back into play. It has left an urgent need to prove they are a better team than their record suggests.

"We don't want to go home without a point," Gheorghe Hagi, the Romanian playmaker, said.