7 hours ago
10
Craig Bellamy predicted a sleepless night and he will not have been the only one. Most of Wales, population a little more than three million, will have pulled the curtains, struggling to shift the pervading sense of an opportunity missed. “My heart hurts,” he said approaching midnight in Cardiff and the gravity of it all may only fully sink in when Bosnia and Herzegovina, after prevailing in a World Cup playoff in the capital, host Italy on Tuesday for a place at this summer’s showpiece.
Wales fell at the penultimate hurdle, chalking up another near-miss after the anguish of another penalty shootout defeat, two years on from their last against Poland. Bellamy has breathed life into the team, renewing optimism and arming his players with naked belief, but this is unmistakably a blow. The easy thing to do at this juncture is preach about the green shoots but at this point nobody wants to think too hard about the merits of being promoted to the top tier of the Nations League or the home nations Euro 2028.
Bellamy would probably put himself in that bracket. While constantly looking towards the future, fastidiously studying the potential pathways, succession plans from the youth age groups and players with dual-registered nationalities, his overarching aim was to succeed in the present. It is hard to cast Thursday’s elimination as failure but it is not without consequences.
Bellamy acknowledged qualification for successive World Cups, particularly after failing to reach Euro 2024, would represent a significant financial boost, recently joking it was something the Football Association of Wales’s chief executive, Noel Mooney, reminded him of every week. Qualification would have been worth millions and allowed the FAW to accelerate infrastructure behind the scenes as well as development at grassroots. Bellamy said those rewards brought pressure. “We will keep progressing but money helps,” he said. “We have seen what [previous] tournaments have allowed us to do. That type of money would speed it up.”
Where did it go wrong? Wales faded in the second half on Thursday before wrestling back momentum at the start of extra time; Harry Wilson will probably spend the weekend wondering how Tarik Muharemovic blocked his goal-bound shot after reading the substitute Liam Cullen’s exquisite layoff. There was a notable drop-off after Daniel James and David Brooks were withdrawn and perhaps that should be no surprise given their replacements, Cullen and Mark Harris, are not regulars at second-tier clubs Swansea City and Oxford United respectively.
Equally, it is unfair to point the finger squarely at the substitutes. Cullen fashioned Wales’s best opening for that Wilson chance and Harris scored his spot-kick. Another sub, Sorba Thomas, provided a welcome fresh impetus and his deep cross in the final minute of extra time fashioned Wales’s final chance, Harris unable to latch on to Brennan Johnson’s header. “They [Bosnia] are drilled for chaos and we allowed chaos to creep in for 20 minutes,” Bellamy said.
Johnson and Neco Williams failed to score from the spot but Bellamy acknowledged the collective struggle to see out the game at 1-0 before Edin Dzeko glanced in an 86th-minute corner, cheaply conceded after a panicked clearance by Cullen. “We stopped playing,” said the Wales head coach. “We can’t stop playing, we just can’t. It is a big lesson for us. We’re not built to defend deep and see things out. It is really difficult to look at the learning part right now but it would definitely be that period: when the heat comes, we’ve got to be even calmer.”
James, who was withdrawn to a standing ovation before Dzeko equalised, said Wales should take heart from their performance even if the result rendered it largely redundant. “Anyone watching, be it Wales fans or people around the world, will see how far we’ve come,” said James, one of four Leeds players in Bellamy’s starting lineup. “We’ve got so much more to show. We’ll be back.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly given Bellamy does not believe in superstition, he does not view penalties as the lottery they are often painted. “All you can ever do is prepare the best you,” he said. “I don’t believe in luck on pens.”
So Wales practised penalties throughout the week. Karl Darlow did his homework on potential opposition takers and saved the first low to his left from Ermedin Demirovic. “When they missed the first one I thought: ‘Yeah, exactly why we practise’,” Bellamy reflected. “We rehearsed them, did analysis. It leaves me more bewildered.”
