Romania coach Edward Iordanescu felt insulted by that pre-game chatter he called "shameful" of possibly contriving a low-key draw against Slovakia to send both teams into the European Championship knockout round.

It did indeed end 1-1 on Wednesday and Romania finished atop of Group E - ahead of favored Belgium - but not in the way those pundits throwing shade had predicted.

And Iordanescu let them know about it after a high-energy game played in severe weather which had wild mood swings, and earned his team a round-of-16 meeting with the Netherlands.

"There is some people that should apologize to us," Iordanescu said, criticizing some of the commentary earlier in the week. "They should have waited to see and then judge us. So this was shameful.

"They throw this garbage to us, not just the team but to our fans. We showed we have character," the Romanian coach said, in the only answer in English of his news conference.

The quirk of the 24-team Euros format is that Groups E and F playing on the final day of the group stage have an advantage. They know the result they need to be assured of being among the four best third-place teams who must advance to the last-16 bracket.

At the start of play Wednesday, all four teams were on three points before Romania and Slovakia drew in Frankfurt at the same time as Belgium was held 0-0 by Ukraine, which was eliminated.

Romania topped the group on the tiebreaker of more goals scored than Belgium, and both had a better goal difference than third-place Slovakia.

"Nobody could say my team didn't play to win for the 90 minutes," Slovakia coach Francesco Calzona said.

Both Iordanescu and Calzona were right to feel vindicated one day after questions at pre-game news conferences about the option of a contrive a low-energy draw to get the point both needed.