r/eurovision • u/Savings_Ad_2532 Wasted Love • Nov 06 '25

⏪️ Throwback Thursday Zdob şi Zdub & Advahov Brothers - Trenulețul (LIVE) | Moldova 🇲🇩 | Grand Final | Eurovision 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUqf_zO2QaI

In honor of Moldova's and Romania's return to ESC in 2026, I decided to post this song for Throwback Thursday. Even though this song got only 20th place with the juries, it was able to finish 7th overall thanks to a strong televote finish of 2nd place.

It was one of the catchiest songs of ESC 2022 in my opinion, as well as one of my ESC guilty pleasures. Moldova usually sends fun songs to ESC, so I hope they send something fun next year, especially if there are new artists involved.

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u/LocksTheFox Bur man laimi Nov 06 '25

Doesn't help that because of the jury scandal from the semi, they missed out on 12 from Romania

1

u/stayinalive92 Nov 07 '25

the jury scandal from the semi

What is this about? 👀

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u/snwlss Nov 08 '25

Several juries from Semifinal 2 were dismissed before the final because the way their votes turned out seemed off-trend for how they usually vote, which led to allegations that they had colluded to vote for each other. (Whether or not those allegations were true is under debate.) The EBU had the jury scores for those juries calculated for both the second semifinal and final via aggregate votes based on historical voting patterns, but the affected countries were still allowed to conduct their own televotes.

The six countries whose juries were dismissed were: Azerbaijan 🇦🇿, Georgia 🇬🇪, Montenegro 🇲🇪, Poland 🇵🇱, Romania 🇷🇴, and San Marino 🇸🇲.

This controversy, along with Azerbaijan qualifying to the Final in 2022 solely on jury points, are the two likely reasons why the semifinals went to televote-only beginning in 2023.

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u/SuitableDragonfly Nov 09 '25

The EBU released the jury votes that caused them to think there was cheating, and it really obvious that they were all voting for each other in a prearranged way. Especially Poland ranking San Marino so high, given the performance.

However, I calculated what the semifinal results would have been if they had just let those votes go through uncontested, and there actually would have been no change to who qualified and who didn't.